


How Many Thousands

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Brother Feels, Codependent Winchesters (Supernatural), Depression, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, POV Sam Winchester, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 13, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, almost, amorphously post S13, ostensibly case!fic, the worst possible medical decision every single time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 02:19:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 22,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14462883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: Sam and Dean end up on the messy side of a curse they're trying to break. Or at least, that's how this is supposed to go. But then it's been three months, with no way out. Then six. Then more.Dean keeps him awake. They talk about Jack Nicholson's filmography, and alligator gar. Whether or not Roswell had ever been worth watching. The likelihood that Sam will bleed into his brain and die. The new Metallica album, which somehow Sam had heard about but Dean had not. It'd come up on NPR. Dean announces, "Rock is dead."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [finchandsparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=finchandsparrow).



Sam wakes up bound. 

He drops through a moment of panic, forcefully registering his confinement and sudden, bludgeoning pain. But he's wrapped in canvas, not rope. He's wrapped in a shroud, like a body in a grave. He smells charred. As he struggles, metal creaks. It's all more comforting than you'd think. 

There are worse places to be. 

Finally, the shroud gives, sliding against the leather below him, and the cloth falls from his face. He's in the backseat of the Impala. That's a good sign.

The only thing missing is Dean, who's not there to state the obvious ("Hey, you're awake!"). Dean, who's not there to ask if he's okay. 

Sam's mind twists outward in three directions. The first nurses his pain. Throbbing. Stinging. When he throws the canvas from his body his arm remembers fire, and he realizes he's burned. Cotton fibers rip from raw flesh, start pus oozing. With the pain Sam remembers the hunt--which apparently had gone poorly. He doesn't remember saving himself by himself, which means that Dean must have helped. But now Dean's gone, and he wouldn't have left Sam like this on purpose. The third twist in Sam's mind puts his phone in his hand, bright screen springing to life in the darkness as Sam's hands operate ahead of him; the third twist started looking for Dean before Sam had even realized that's what he wanted. 

He has seventeen text messages and one voicemail from an unknown number. His lock screen:

DW - fk;  
DW -           '  
DW - 'kfe2234

And so on.

The voicemail: _\--found a fucking phone with buttons. Sammy. Sorry about the hair. Tried to find the actual phone on my phone and all I could get to was text messages--could tell from the swoosh sound. I'm sure those went great. Fucking touchscreens. When you--_ [garbled noise, objects tumbling, swearing] _Call me._

Sam's fingers find his hair, some of which flakes black into his eyes, and it does smell singed. He takes a deep breath and swallows down the nausea that's beginning to come with the pain. He calls Dean.

The phone rings, and rings. Finally, Dean answers. "Fucking touchscreens," is the first thing he says.

"Is there something wrong with your hands?" Sam asks. Dean's always been a traditionalist, but he's loved touchscreens since they were figments of _Star Trek_ 's imagination. Then Sam adds, "Where are you?"

"Hands are fine. Eyes, not so much."

"Oh," says Sam. His mind is fog. There's painkillers in the trunk, probably, but the fifth of whiskey under the seat is closer. He hopes it'll help. "You could've left a note," he says. "Instead of trying to text."

"Coulda shoulda woulda," says Dean.

"You could've stayed."

"I couldn't. I was killing you," says Dean.

That seems familiar. 

Sam remembers Dean crying out, cradling his eyes with one hand and grabbing for Sam with the other. Sam remembers bursting into flames at his touch. For some reason, Dean's instinct had been to hold Sam tighter. The fire spread.

"Right," Sam says. There's more to the story, he's pretty sure. Any amount of _why?_ , for instance. But at the moment, he doesn't care. He takes another swig of whiskey. "Your eyes--" he starts.

"I dunno. I can see light, and blurry shit. Guess I'll find a clinic or something. See if it's a magic thing, or--"

Or a real thing. Real would be more complicated. Magic is already complicated.

"You good on your end?" Dean asks.

It occurs to Sam that he must sound significantly more put together than he feels. He pulls more cotton fibers from his chest, gooey and wormlike. Filaments myelinated with his skin. "Yeah. Gonna find a CVS," he says.

 

\--

 

"Fireworks?" the cashier had asked, eyeing Sam's hair and the bandages and alcohol and Aspercreme on the counter.

"Sure," said Sam. He's pretty sure he only looked homeless, not medium rare. 

The motel clerk hadn't said anything at all. Kid would've sold a bed to an elephant without noticing.

Not that Sam can judge. He doesn't remember tending to himself, but it's 3AM when he wakes up to his chest and arm tingling as the lidocaine wears off. He's cleanly bandaged and otherwise naked. It's solid work, Sam appraises. And he's feeling significantly more alive now, after the passing out and the painkillers. The mystery of his day floats back to him. 

They'd been hunting paper birds.

While he waits for Dean to call, Sam trades between dressing and reading. Clothing is so much less appealing when you're missing a whole lot of skin. Of course, the lore isn't reassuring, either. But Sam's pretty sure he knows what they're dealing with. Would've been nice to know that last night.

"How does it look?" is Dean's first question--he's asking about the burns, not the lore, and Sam feels suddenly exhausted. He hasn't even raised his phone to his ear yet. He doesn't want to offer updates; he wants Dean to be here to figure all that out on his own.

"I mean, a doctor would be concerned. Infection, scarring. All the basics," says Sam.

"Shock?" asks Dean.

"Not anymore."

"Deadpool?"

"You wish."

"Well, I have good news, at least," says Dean.

"I've got some bad."

Dean sighs, as though he's dropping his lungs to the ground like sacks. "You first," he says.

"So, a couple thousand years ago, some guy rescued a bird," Sam begins. "He spends a winter nursing it back to health. The following spring, the bird is strong enough to fly again, and he releases it. A little bit later, the guy meets some woman, they get married, and they live a poor but happy life. But then--"

"Okay okay, wait. The whole point of you going first was to spare us the suspense," Dean butts in. "Storytime isn't expediting anything."

"Fine. Short version: It's a chaste marriage. He's not supposed to look upon her, or whatever--and there's a shitton of literature professors who think that that's about sexual repression, by the way. But one day he can't help it--one day she's in their bathhouse, he peeks inside, and boom! He's stricken blind. She goes up in flames."

"I don't want to fuck you," says Dean. "I'm cool if you and me have a chaste marriage."

Sam ignores him. "It turns out the woman isn't a woman at all--she's that bird he rescued."

"Classic."

"But here's the twist: She's not a _bird_ bird. She's an origami crane, enchanted by a witch. So that's why when the guy beholds her, the power of his lust sets her on fire."

"I still don't want to fuck you," says Dean. "Also, how the fuck do you nurse a paper bird back to health for a whole winter without realizing it's a paper fucking bird?"

"I dunno, Dean. It's magic. Besides, it's the concept, not the details. I mean, you apparently set me on fire with the power of your lust."

"Keep talking about my lust. Maybe you can set your own mouth on fire," Dean says, so quickly Sam's not sure if it really happened or not. Dean's already freight training into his next thought: "If we're dealing with cursed origami, all those things in the attic must've been the cranes--so I'm guessing we destroy them all, the curse gets lifted. Usually how this witch stuff goes, you know? Did this witch happen to helpfully tell anyone how many birds she made? You know, for bragging rights."

Sam hadn't remembered any attic until Dean brought it up, though that explained the driveway he'd woken up in. He closes his eyes, and tries to exist in a coherent reality.

"Sam, how many birds were there?" Dean asks again.

"A thousand, probably," Sam replies. He's starting to feel hazy again. "She's called a Senbazuru witch, which is Japanese for, uh. One thousand cranes."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"Well, the good news was gonna be, I'm only blind 'til my corneas grow back."

"Do they grow back?"

"Apparently."

"Cool," says Sam. Which is fantastic news, it really is. But given the givens, it doesn't feel fantastic enough. Everything's moving too fast for Sam to get ahold of; all he's left with is the sense that it is moving in the wrong direction. They were hunting; the hunt fucked them. Dean caught him on fire. But what did any of that even mean?

"It means we hunt the monster," says Dean, who has no eyeballs--to Sam, who has no skin.

"Together?" Sam asks, because he's not sure Dean understood the story. Curses work unto completion. If they get within view of each other, Sam's pretty sure the power of these thousand cranes will go at Dean until he has no occipital lobe left, never mind eyeballs. And Sam will burn.

"Not until after we fix this. You know how curses work," says Dean, oddly patiently. "But hey, thank god for Verizon. It'll be like we're right next to each other."

Sam rolls his eyes. Seeing as he'd been trying to explain the exact same thing Dean thought he was explaining to Sam, Sam's already certain it won't be like they're right next to each other. Apparently these pain meds make him sound like an idiot.

"I'm gonna hang up. Need to concentrate," says Dean. 

There's a blast of noise as Deans moves from wherever he'd been to wherever he is, people and traffic and wind. 

"Where are you?" Sam asks.

"Seven blocks, two turns, and four chirping streetlights away from a motel."

"Which one?"

"You know, I didn't ask. _Shit--_ " ("Yeah, actually! I _am_ fucking blind!" Dean shouts, away from his phone.)

"Dean?"

"I'm gonna get run over. Gonna hang up."

 

\--

 

Dean doesn't call back for a while, and Sam comes to a dead halt. Everything stops making sense. The path forward gets swallowed by the sea. Sam's numbness and the cloudform haze in his brain makes everything float. 

It's twenty minutes before Sam realizes he's still lying on the bed, phone in hand, cracks in the ceiling idly memorized. He feels sucked into the mattress, less responsible to his body parts because it's not clear where they end. 

He's staring at the cracks in the ceiling again.

He thinks of birds.

Yup, time to change his dressings again. Things are getting weird enough; he doesn't need an infection on top of it all. Sam sits up.

Another twenty minutes later, Sam's massaging petroleum jelly into clean gauze before he pats the gauze onto his chest, like square white oven mitts. He raises his burnt arm above his head experimentally, but it doesn't matter; it's already swollen, the ragged edges around the burn puckering with extra fluid. This is exactly the kind of shit you don't want happening until after the monster is dead.

After yet another twenty minutes, Sam divides seven city blocks by sixty minutes and wonders if he should be watching the local news for a blind guy who walked into traffic downtown. Then his phone rings.

"So should we count them as we kill them?" says Dean, without preamble. Sam's sense of time and space fracture again.

"What?"

"Well, I mean. There's a thousand, right? How else are we gonna know when we're done?"

_Don't bother. There is no 'done,'_ wheedles something at the back of Sam’s mind. 

They never are. And the enormity of a thousand palm-sized paper cranes anywhere in the world is daunting, to say the least. Not that they're strangers to daunting. But with things like Lucifer, for instance, the showdown is inevitable. You will eventually find him--or he’ll find you. There's a sort of cosmic magnetism there. 

With these things, they could be beating their wings in the Amazon, causing chaos. They wouldn't know Sam from any other matchstick. And they probably don't care. People hunt for decades without ever finding their white whales. Now they've got a thousand.

Dean’s assessment of their situation is significantly less dramatic. Sam toys with the possibility that he might still be a little shocky. Sam's staked his entire reputation on never being able to out-dramatic his brother.

All Dean says is, "I figure they’re like bug broods. Most of them will probably get killed off all on their own, you know? They're like, I dunno, sea turtles. Or frogs."

"You mean... like birds?" says Sam. 

Dean must have his phone on the table, because Sam hears the thump of something heavy and the rustle of plastic grocery bag. Then the clink of glass on glass. The detour explains his delay, at least. Sam waits for the telltale bottlecap pop, but it doesn't come.

"Did you buy twistoffs?" Sam scoffs.

"I dunno what I fucking bought," Dean says. "It could be Natty Ice for all I know." 

Sam hears the light thunk of a bottle being placed on the table. "You could have asked the cashier," Sam points out.

"It's not Natty. And it ain't bad, whatever it is," Dean updates. "Anyway. The birds--they’re just paper, aren’t they? Sure, evil magic paper, but it’s bound to rain eventually. It's a dangerous world out there. Maybe there's a thousand of 'em, but not for long."

Sam sighs. "Then what's the point in counting them?"

"Sam, work with me here." 

"Fine, whatever. First to fifty?"

Dean snorts. Dumb game. But of course he's in.

“Don’t cheat,” says Sam.

Maybe there's a thousand of them, but not for long.

 

\--

 

Sam brain refuses to fall in line with the hype. All he wants to do is skip ahead to the part where they're done with this. All one thousand birds. 

He tells himself it's just his heart falling into step with his body, the monotony of burn care and the sidewaysness of medication paired with the whiplash of one quick hunt suddenly turned long recovery. The transition is concussive, the way it always is. He just needs to settle. Take a breath. Find a rhythm. His body will heal; his heart will get over it. _Then_ his brain will fall in line with the hype.

He'll be fine.

He'll be fine.

 

\--

 

Everything's gonna be fine.

 

\--

 

He misses Dean, and feels dumb about it. 

He takes a lukewarm shower out of respect for his burns. 

It's only been a day or so. There's really no reason to miss Dean. The terms of their separation are finite; they'll see each other soon. Their reunion is not contingent on _if I can ever forgive you for what you've done_ or _if you can rise from the dead_ ; _if I can find you on whatever splinter of the universe you ended up in_. They share a city limit. All they need to do is break a little curse.

_Pull it together._

He has a missed text message and a voicemail waiting for him outside of the shower. The text just says _yo_. The voicemail doesn't add much, though Dean still takes the full three minutes before Sam's inbox cuts him off. 

Sam redresses his wounds.

 

\--

 

_\--always an NCIS marathon on. Man, I hate cop procedurals. I can't even see and I still have the image of this guy's shitty crew cut while he says all these stoic one-liners. There's fifty-seven channels. I don't understand--_

 

\--

 

Good news: No one else in town seems to have got themselves as fucked as they have. Seems like the curse is a one and done.

Bad news: One and done, cut and run, apparently.

Dean had a theory about this early on. The last thing he remembers seeing is an explosion of small white cranes--probably what killed his corneas. But they'd exploded every which way; maybe they're only strong in numbers. As solo artists, they're harmless.

"And that much harder to find." Sam grimaces.

As far as tracking down origami goes, Dean is useless. It's been almost a week now, and he's gone completely blind, which his clinic doctor had assured him was a good sign. It's also a firm reminder that they're still very much in the "first it'll get worse" part of "but it's going to get better." 

"I'm thinking about switching motels," Sam says.

"You need meds?" Dean asks. He hasn't said anything about it yet, but Sam can tell he's starting to come undone. After the darkness had come pain, and the only way Dean can focus on anything is by hyperfixating. "You hydrated? I could bring you--"

"Dude," Sam stops him. "One, I'm fine. We've been over this. And two, I don't wanna be on fire again."

_I already tried that,_ he doesn't say. Several days ago, armed with Google Maps, an aversion to his brother in pain, and a lack of anything better to do, Sam had figured out which motel Dean was staying at. Seven blocks and two turns from urgent care. Walking distance from the condemned house that had had the attic full of cranes. Liquor store somewhere in between. This whole time, they'd only been about a mile from each other.

But when Sam had gone to test a theory--if the birds were gone, was the curse dead too?--that's when he'd started his chest burning. He'd been within a few blocks of Dean's motel before he'd had to stop. He ended up at Dean's urgent care clinic instead, and bam! Just like that, he'd caught an infection. 

Now his skin's sloughing off in parchment reams, curling into tiny beaks and wings and pointed paper necks. 

He drowns them all.

Doesn't stop them, though. The cranes keep separating from his skin, and he knows that he and Dean need to get further apart. The cranes will finish what they started if they don't.

"Thinking of switching motels," he says again. "Got a lead on a crane on the other side of town, maybe," he says, though of course he doesn't.

Dean offers a guttural hum in response. Sam hears a door creak open, and the flutter of cheap metal squeaking. Or at least--well, Sam's not sure what that sound is.

"Where are you going?" Sam asks.

"Closet," says Dean. Then he mutters something about blackout curtains and not good enough and fucking light sensitivity to light and fucking migraine. Apparently corneas make terrible trauma patients.

Hangers, Sam thinks. The metal sound must've been hangers. 

"You're in the closet?" he asks. "You put the Do Not Disturb card out, right? You're not gonna scare the crap out of some maid--"

"In the closet," Dean confirms. "Gonna sit in the dark and get as drunk as possible on"--he pauses--"eight weak beers. Just gonna-- ride this out."

"Try to remember to eat something," Sam advises. The idea of holing up in a dark motel closet for a week or so sounds incredibly pathetic, even for them.

"Gonna try to get _as drunk as possible_ on eight weak beers," Dean repeats.

"Okay."

 

\--

 

Sam leaves Dean to his closet.

It's been a week, and his brain has yet to fall in line. But that's okay, he tells himself. He knows what he has to do. He doesn't need to feel like doing it.

If he pays enough attention, there's a tingle in his arms, in his chest. An urge to move in one direction. A restlessness.

He follows it for seven blocks, to the east side of town, where glass decorates the medians like colorful sand and plastic bags grow gray and ratty against the bottom of chain link fences. Plastered to an amber bottle is what remains of one crumpled, wretched paper crane. 

If it were a real bird, its neck would be broken and its wings defeathered. When Sam lights it on fire, it's like a mercy killing.

The tingling in his body dulls, but it doesn't disappear. When Sam turns to his left, the tingling strengthens--just a bit. He follows it--further this time. He finds another crane.

He does it again and again. He doesn't think about it much.

Just tells himself, This is helping.

That's all he needs to tell himself.

 

\--

 

Six days later, Sam still hasn't heard anything from Dean. He makes a call.

There's water on the other end of the line--a staticy stream, as from a shower. If Dean seriously answered his phone in the shower, this all seems like an electrocution waiting to happen, but Sam figures at least Dean's not in his closet anymore. That's an improvement. 

Then Sam hears a high-pitched chirping, like some kind of alarm.

"Dean, what are you doing?"

"Obliterating the enemy," Dean pants. The chirping stops.

"You found a crane?" Sam's about to lord over him, _Gotta pick up the pace, buddy, 'cause I'm already up to eight._

But then Dean says, "Probably been in here the whole time."

The prospect is just unsettling enough to kill Sam's mood. It's not that he thinks a paper crane flying solo could do Dean any real harm--if it could, it probably would've; it's not like it hadn't had the chance--but Sam still doesn't like the idea of Dean being watched by a monster he can't see. Not if Sam can't be there, too.

"I lit it on fire," Dean explains.

"How're your eyes doing?"

"Well, I lit some other things on fire first," says Dean. Sam hears the shower squeak off. "I wouldn't pick me for free throws. Getting better, though. How're the burns?"

Sam tells him. He tells him about the way his skin had sloughed into sheaves of parchment--how the parchment had begun to fold itself. Sam tells him, for some reason, about the snack selection at the gas station just outside of town. About Joyce at the sandwich shop and about the billboard he figured Dean would think was funny.

"Jesus, Sammy. Skin cranes," Dean says in response. He's clearly not a fan of the prospect--Sam's skin becoming things without him. Sam's skin becoming other, all because he'd tried to get too close.

Sam had tried to bury that part in Joyce, in snacks, in billboards.

"Didn't know they stocked Chunky Nut Bars this far west," says Dean. He buries it, too.

 

\--

 

This is helping, Sam tells himself as he grinds another crane beneath his boot. But it doesn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like anything at all.


	2. Chapter 2

They talk a lot. More than they had in each other's presence, probably. At the Bunker, they'd always taken full advantage of their separate bedrooms, and on the road sometimes conversation felt like more trouble than it was worth. It's different now.

"Got called a Millennial today," says Dean, and Sam can't tell if Dean sounds annoyed by this or smug.

"What's the age cutoff for Millennial these days? Anyone born after 1890?"

"You don't gotta be jealous. Apparently texting over your pancakes is the key to eternal youth."

Sam grimaces. "Yeah, about that. Apparently, pay-as-you-go wasn't the way to go with the phone plan this month."

"You didn't read the fine print on that one? 'Not suitable for customers under bullshit Japanese curse'? Maybe this is all some kind of Samsung conspiracy, and they're just trying to start the Apocalypse one phone bill at a time. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Samsung's Korean."

"That's what they want you to think."

"Hey, here's a question for you," says Sam, folding his newspaper back to the Sunday crossword. He'd filled out half of it a few days before. "Eighteen letters, Metallica song. Starts with--"

"Nothing Else Matters."

Sam looks down at his crossword, checks how "Nothing Else Matters" across tracks with what he's filled in for 5 and 13 Down. "How did you do that?" he asks.

"They always pick the singles for those things," says Dean, as though that were an acceptable explanation. "Where are you, anyway?"

"Victor, Idaho," Sam answers. "It's outside Jackson Hole. You?"

"Take a guess."

"Victor, Idaho," Sam says mulishly.

"Five white pegs," says Dean.

It's an old game--one Sam had definitely forgotten about. Used to be, they'd play it with Dad whenever he ended up on a daisy-chain of hunts, and they'd been left at school far away. It was how Sam had learned their father hadn't even tried to keep close. 

White pegs were wrong answers--black ones were good. Five white pegs meant Dean wasn't anywhere near Victor right now. He wasn't anywhere near Sam.

"Nantucket," says Sam.

"Five white pegs."

"El Paso."

"Three white, two black."

Two black pegs meant Sam had region and timezone right. State, county, city were still wrong.

"I can't believe we ever thought this game was fun," says Sam. "That's the mark of a deprived childhood, you know."

"We just wanted to know where he was, is all," says Dean.

 _That's_ the mark of their childhood. Adulthood, too.

"Tulsa," Sam guesses.

"Beignets," Dean counters, ending the game prematurely. He's in New Orleans. "You're right. This game is shit."

"How's swamp life?" Sam asks.

"Pretty sure I saw an actual crane. So there's that," says Dean. "Tried to text you a pic, but it kept bouncing back. It's 2018, dude. Did you miss the two decades where cameraphones exist now?"

"I set a data cap, sorry. Money matters, man."

"Fine. I'll try to text more responsibly, _Dad._ "

 

\--

 

Dean is like the aunt who posts inspirational quotes on Facebook all day. Sam doesn't have an aunt, and Dean's random texts aren't inspirational, but Sam's pretty sure the vibe is the same. Namely, Sam doesn't see the point and he doesn't know why Dean needs to tell him half the things he tells him.

 _but did you click the link,_ Dean texts. Sam did not. He does not answer.

In a previous life that did not include, apparently, the last few weeks, Dean had been a laconic texter at best. Sam sort of misses that.

 _You didnt retire,_ Sam reminds him. _you have a job. you don't need to forward every chain letter. or are you gonna start sending pics of your 20 cats. ?_

Dean sends a video that Sam's data cap won't let him open. The caption reads, _this isnt hunting_.

Sam scoops a paper crane out of a mass of used napkins on a cafe table. He tears its wings off like he's a kid again, torturing craneflies during recess. He doesn't need to watch Dean's video to know what it is.

\--

 

"Do you want the car back?" Sam asks one day, out of nowhere. He's not sure why it took him a whole month for the question to occur to him. It's like he wakes up one day and realizes what he's driving. Then he realizes he doesn't want it.

Dean, for his part, hesitates. Then his hesitation turns to full-blown silence. 

He's actually thinking about it, Sam realizes.

There's some part of Dean that wants Sam to keep the Impala. Or at least, there's a part of him that thinks that that's what he should want. Separating desire from obligation has never been Dean's strong suit.

Sam wants Dean to ask, _Don't you want her?_ He wants Dean to say, _You should keep her._

Sam's not even sure why he wants this--because he doesn't want her. He doesn't care.

But in the end, Dean says, "Yes." 

Yes, yes. Yes, Dean really fucking does.

Sam's not sure if he's relieved or disappointed. But maybe he doesn't need to feel anything. She's always been Dean's car.

"I'll leave it in Lebanon," he says. "Figure you'll pass that way soon enough."

 

\--

 

 _your stickf igures are still shit_ Dean texts, under 24 hours after Sam leaves her in the Bunker's garage. Sam hadn't felt the need to linger, and it's a good thing, too. Dean hadn't wasted any time before he pounced. He'd probably driven nonstop from the bayou. 

_id send a pic but i guess your phones shit too_ , Dean adds.

He's referring to the Post-It Sam had left on the passenger seat--on it, a stick figure labeled "SAM."

Sam means to respond and doesn't. Then he forgets about it.

Then it's been two weeks and Sam's gone through three different rental cars in as many states, and that's still the last text in their archive. No calls, either. It doesn't necessarily feel wrong, just quiet. They've found, again, the quietude of cogs in a routine. Their separation becomes their newest version of normal.

 

\--

 

It's fine.

 

\--

 

Another week, another state. Sam steps into another rental office. He's got his eye on the gunmetal Yaris in the parking lot outside, a Yaris that never in a million years would he and Dean have driven in together. Its gas mileage is supposed to be good, though.

He toys with the idea of buying one outright, skipping the pain of rental after rental after rental, but that would be admitting how long this was really going to take.

 _It's only a thousand cranes,_ he reminds himself. _This won't be our normal much longer._ Surely they've dispatched hundreds by now, and the summer's not over yet.

Surely they're almost there.

 

\--

 

Cranes in triplicate in the Smokies. In the sunflowers in Nebraska. A butterfly garden in Nipomo. On a cliff face, otherwise owned by red-tailed hawks. Flickering yellow in a yield light, roped from one side of the street to the next in some small Midwestern town. Crushed underfoot in Harlem. Shot down with a .22 in the Badlands, white fragments scattering violently in the wind. Surely they're almost there.

Surely they're almost done.

 

\--

 

Sam can't shake it.

Now when Dean calls, Sam doesn't answer. He can't imagine holding his phone to his head and Having a Conversation, like a set piece in a play. Instead, he texts responses, always several hours after the fact. He's not an asshole. He never leaves Dean hanging; he just doesn't pick up. He knows he can't.

His body is fine. His burns turn to scars and Sam gets on with his life. But his brain never falls into line, and something is wrong. He knows something is wrong but it only seems like the thing to do is wait. Endure. And that, Sam knows he can do.

He stares down frustration, hopelessness.

Some days, it's like his heart wants to free him, but it can't. It's a useless appendage. It's vestigial. Maybe that's what burned.

Sam forces himself out of bed and into the shower. He puts on his coat and his boots and he follows that tingle in his blood down the Interstate. When he catches up with his next paper crane, it doesn't feel like victory, or vengeance.

 _But you're almost done,_ he reminds himself. _You are._

You've been here before, he reminds himself. You've felt like this before. 

It always ends.

 

\--

 

It's hard not to care when the world is ending. For Sam, the way out of numbness has always been sacrifice. Finding some way to cut deep enough to feel enough to free himself.

When he sees the cranes in his dreams, they ask nothing of him.

 _There is no sacrifice to make,_ they say, _to save yourself from this._

 

\--

 

Three months later and they're not almost done. Over the phone, Dean's walking Sam through a brake job on a clunker Sam had bought for $400, sans engine. Burn a couple thousand dollars more than Sam had ever intended to invest, and hey, it might actually drive one day.

"A Wrangler's not a clunker," Dean says. "Definitely worth more than you paid for it, in any case. $400 on one of these'd probably get you just the brakes."

"They only sold it that cheap 'cause it caught on fire."

"Then you match," says Dean. "You got the calipers ready or not?"

"I'm checking the diagram."

"If you're just gonna consult Joe YouTube, why'd you call me?" Dean huffs.

Sam doesn't respond right away, phone nestled between his cheek and his shoulder as he furrows his brow at the maintenance diagram he'd printed off.

"Sam, are you okay?" Dean asks into the silence.

"Just trying to figure this out," Sam says. He squints at the diagram.

"It's been three months," says Dean. "Now suddenly you're calling again, and you bought a Jeep."

Sam doesn't think that changes his answer.

"I've been doing some thinking," Sam tries to explain, though that's probably the exact opposite of what he's been doing all this time. "Killing origami. You know the drill."

“Remember when we set that racist truck on fire?” Dean asks. Non sequitur.

Sam almost doesn’t, then remembers Cassie, and does.

"I do know your drill, by the way," Dean adds, which is probably what he'd meant to say the first time. But he'd chickened out, thrown up a random nostalgic memory instead, like a firework. 

Dean brings it back around, though. He says, "I know you, Sam. I just don't know how to help you."

 

\--

 

Dean texts him every night for a week. One night, it's a blow-by-blow of a late night Chopped marathon. Every morning, Sam responds.

He's not sad. He doesn't even think he's lonely. He's nothing. At the end of the week, Sam has a functional Jeep with skid plates he installed himself. He couldn't tell you much more than that. Oh, and there was a Chopped marathon.

 

\--

 

The next time Sam finds himself at the bunker, there is half a homemade casserole in the freezer, wearing the Post-It note with Sam's stick figure on it.

 

\--

 

Sam wishes there were a way to explain that to Dean that his gestures are meaningful but not helpful.

He just-- He can't stand the idea of normalcy. Of making this normal. He doesn't want to talk to Dean like nothing's wrong. He doesn't want to act like this doesn't affect him. And he doesn't want to go back to a life where his brother can make mac n' cheese with marshmallow whip and call it a prize. ( _Only when Dad's not home,_ Dean whispers. It's supposed to be 'because.' Because Dad's not home.)

Because you are cursed. 

Over and over again, you are cursed.

_You're up against a lot, Dean. Sorry._

The next time Sam passes through the bunker, there are three things strewn across his bed: An encyclopedia of America's lesser-known serial killers, which has smeared cobwebs and dust over Sam's sheets; handwritten instructions for how to not sear the crap out of casseroles when reheating them, effectively melting the bottom of them to the crockware because _have a heart, Sam_ ; and what appears to be MDMA.

 

\--

 

Sam lives with it.

 

\--

 

Sam's known since the beginning there was a real chance these cranes could range further than he and Dean could ever hope to reach. He's known since Victor, when the spread was such that Dean could end up all the way in New Orleans.

It had started in Portland, and maybe it's lucky that the Pacific slammed the door on the cranes' aspirations West: There it was already, the end of the frontier. The coast. But people take vacations; barges drift. Sam knows there are so, so many ways for a bird to cross the sea. And perhaps they're in Mexico already, catching an updraft over a fence. On the bottom of an officer's boot. Masquerading as scratch paper, in the pocket of someone headed south.

Sam had tried to map their flight path once, as they spiraled over America. But they don't follow food, or other resources; they do follow weather, but there's enough human interference--origami hitchhiking--it's probably not worth tracking. Mostly, they spiral. And the traces that guide Sam get dimmer, and dimmer.

Sam keeps searching for a pattern, because if there isn't one he doesn't know how much more of this he can take. When he was a kid, he'd thought the way they moved was random. That first year out of Stanford? Random. But then--

 _Maybe you need random, Sam._ Because random isn't preordained; it's not fate; it's not a cosmic script forcing his hand. Maybe this is the way it needs to be. Maybe that's how he gets saved.

It's not as though it's in the best interest of the cranes, either. They're relatively harmless alone--they're paper. They can flutter a bit. Maybe that's why that first crane had needed to be rescued by its villager. Then, when it was strong enough, it went to find more of its own.

Sam's not sure why the cranes had split up in the first place. That's not what flocks of birds do. It's not what bees do. Ant colonies. Pods of whales. But maybe it was their own fault, and the force of their own power blew them apart. That would be sad.

How sad, Sam's got a fair measure. They're making him share in the feeling, after all. Their curse is Sam curse. Maybe they hadn't wanted to hurt anything. It had just happened, and it was their error, their inadvertency, at the cost of Sam’s happiness. 

Typical.

Sam wonders if he gathered enough of the cranes together, if they'd become something else. Start feeling and thinking and becoming women who cannot be looked upon. All the ones he's tried to keep have died. Sure seemed like they'd kept well enough in that attic, though.

This is how Sam ends up at the bunker, researching curse boxes. He ends up mired in Magmus's files, all of which remind him too much of what Magnus had done to his brother. And that's now Sam had ended up flying solo like this, wasn't it? At least this time Dean wasn't falling apart and away from him. Sam has nothing to be depressed about. This time, Dean's in a motel room in Shakopee watching _Home Alone._

But Sam is angier at these paper birds than he'd ever been at Magnus.

When Sam calls, Dean answers. He probably wouldn't have, if it hadn't been Sam's first call in four months. He's so wasted he answers the phone and immediately forgets it's Sam's first call in four months. But he tells Sam he's made it all the way to _Home Alone 4._ It's possible Dean doesn't need Magnus, or the Mark, to fall apart. 

"--fuckin' hate you," Dean drawls, over and over again. "Fucking hate you, I fucking hate you."

"Why?" Sam asks. He'll bite.

"Sam, I hate _you._ "


	3. Chapter 3

A full week goes by before Dean texts, _did you call last wk? sorry i missed you_


	4. Chapter 4

They ease into talking again. It's not planned, and there's no big to-do. Dean's witching hour texting and Sam's diurnal responses becomes one phone call, and then another. Their separation becomes normal again, exactly the way Sam feared it would. He weathers it.

Sam doesn't think he would have minded if Dean had asked about the four months. What was going through Sam's mind. What he was afraid of. 

Dean doesn't. 

One day, Dean starts a conversation with "Now that you're feeling better," which is as close as he ever gets.

Sam doesn't know that that statement is accurate.

They take other jobs, because sometimes you just need to shoot something, and it needs to feel like it matters more than a paper bird. Nothing apocalyptic happens. An infestation of postcards colonizes the bunker's kitchen table: The first is just scratch paper--a "postcard" that's really an ad for a Cape Cod lighthouse tour. Dean counters with a postcard of a jackalope. Sam finds one that's just a photo of a bucket of corn.

It's not until Sam receives a postcard of sunburnt, Floridian Santa--complete with bad joke about Krampus--that he realizes it's been over a year. Dean had used that exact same postcard last Christmas; and there it is, the original peeking out from the depths of the mountain of kitsch.

Somehow, it's been eighteen months and what feels like hundreds of cranes. Maybe even thousands. Not that Sam's counting.

Sam's phone rings, and without preamble, Sam says, "There's how many thousands of terrible postcards in the world and you're gonna double-dip? Seriously?" 

"What?"

"Florida Santa!"

Dean chuckles. "Oh. I thought it looked familiar. What can I say? I stick with the classics."

"What was in Florida?" The last time, it had been mermaids. How Dean had managed to find himself practically equatorial come wintertime, surrounded by naked women, was beyond Sam. He'd like to see Dean top that this year.

"Went to Disney World. Did you know they charge a full $1.25 for postcards in there? I could've sent you like ten Florida Santas for that much."

Sam purses his lips. "Disney World? How'd you manage that? You know, without looking creepy."

"By fucking someone who works as Disney World," Dean replies matter-of-factly. "She wore the mouse ears the whole time, Sammy."

"At the park? Yeah, people do that."

"No, in bed!"

"Did you enjoy that?" Sam asks. He's pretty sure he doesn't want to know, but if anything's gonna get them off the topic of Dean's encounter with fantastical beasts and where to find them, it's making fun of Dean's girlfriend. Sam learned long ago that it's best to not show weakness in these situations.

"I liked that she liked that," Dean answers. 

"Does she have a kid?" Sam asks, because Dean's always had a type. 

"She used to." 

Sam bites his lip. Of course it's a sad story. Of course it's their life, to end up at Disney World in order to bury a child.

"He turned eighteen," Dean says, without pausing for Sam's ruminations. "Moved out for college, went and got grown up. So I guess he's not a kid anymore."

"Jesus, Dean, when you said-- I thought--"

"What?"

"Never mind," snaps Sam, recovering himself. "So, how's Minnie?"

"Probably fine," Dean replies. Sam hears the pop-hiss of a bottle opening. "There wasn't anything in Florida."

"Doesn't mean you couldn't have stayed a while."

"Yeah, well. According to Instagram, Deschutes had an origami problem. Upside, made a couple of teenage girls go viral for a few days. Then I set it on fire. Also, Oregon still has shitty microbrews."

"Do you think you'll see her again?" Sam asks.

"If I did, don't you think I would've led with her name?"

"Dean, do you--" Sam pauses. There isn't an organic way to start in on the heavy shit, so he figures he should just go for it. "I keep feeling like I need to put everything on hold. It's the only thing I can think about. Like, nothing else matters until we break this curse."

"Okay," Dean allows. But his mood changes quick. 

"It's not sustainable," Sam presses on. "Not for something like this."

"She wasn't that into me, Sam. It wasn't serious." He sounds a little deer-in-headlights.

"Dean, forget about Minnie Mouse for a second. I'm trying to explain something. I just-- I didn't want it to feel normal. Like this dumb curse was something we were just gonna have to live with. I think that's why I was-- I'm sorry that I--"

"Fuck, Sam! We do have to live with it, and that's just the way it is. Would you rather die from it? Were you trying to make it worse? Because you fucking did."

Like a deer in headlights with a switchblade. Sam wonders how long Dean's been waiting to be able to tell him that. He's been waiting for four thousand _Home Alone_ s, maybe. 

"Four months!" Dean accuses when Sam says nothing, four thousand _Home Alone_ s after the fact. Dean's hurt has a shelf-life to beat the devil. 

"I'm trying to apologize," Sam says evenly. He shouldn't have to.

"What makes you think I want an apology?" Apparently Dean agrees. In which case, Sam's not sure why they're having this fucking argument.

"Look. I'm going through some shit," says Sam. He's going to spell this out as clearly as possible.

Dean says, "I _know._ I just want you to be okay, Sam. That's all I'm fucking saying."

"What, so you're gonna get pissed at me if I'm not?"

Dean stays silent. 

Sam hears the pop and hiss of a bottle of another one of Oregon's shitty microbrews.

"Is this making any sense to you? I'm trying to make you understand where I'm coming from. Like, when you think about the curse, does it--"

"I don't want to think about it at all. So generally, I don't."

 

\--

 

That's as far as they get for a long time.


	5. Chapter 5

"I don't know how to help you," Dean repeats one day.

"Well, obviously not," Sam snaps, one day.

That doesn't help, either.


	6. Chapter 6

They don't ever make up, necessarily. Time just passes. Other concerns brew. A coven here, a wolf pack there. They're okay. Then they're not. Then they are. At least once, Dean is exactly what Sam needs that day. He is the only thing Sam could have needed that day. Then it's Sam's turn. They keep each other afloat.

Sam's pretty sure the ship's still sinking.

"How's 'not thinking about it' working out for you?" Sam asks, nineteen months into their exile from one another. If Sam could hazard a guess, it's difficult not to think about.

"L'chaim," says Dean, and he drinks.

This is accurate. It's been accurate, in a way that is familiar to Sam. But maybe it's starting to become accurate in ways that are new. You shouldn't be able to tell an alcoholic from a phone conversation, Sam figures. There's too much blank space to hide in. 

But Dean is not a phone conversation. He's hungover the next morning. And the next.

"Rough patch?" Sam suggests.

"Better get that gourd checked," says Dean. "Clearly you don't remember the last decade."

 

\--

 

Five days later, Sam cracks his gourd on the bottom of a reservoir. There's a drought in California, and not enough water down below to break his fall. 

"Sounds like you shouldn't have swan dived," Dean says, once Sam explains having swum to the surface under his own power, having staggered to shore. He probably should have died. It's a whole thing.

"Swan dove?" Dean muses.

"You'd have enjoyed it. It was like _Chinatown_ but with harpies."

"Always love my man Jack," Dean acknowledges. "Where are you now?"

"A fisherman guy named Bill gave me a ride back to town."

"Guess I love my man Bill, then."

"I'm at one of those... motor roundup things--you know, the things, the ones where all the rooms are split up?--except all the cottages are shaped like fishing boats."

"Motor roundups? Seriously?"

"I'm concussed."

"You sure are." Sam hears a shuffle of movement. Sam hadn't realized Dean had essentially been shouting into his phone until the walls of sound around him warp and change--the buzz of conversation, screeching music, the glass clatter of tumblers and pints. Dean's phone is shit for sound isolation, but in this moment Sam doesn't quite mind.

A door slams shut and it's quiet on the other end. He hears Dean curse, _Fucking_ cold out here.

"You tired?" Dean asks.

"When are we not?"

"Too bad you just pulled a graveyard shift, then," says Dean. He grunts as he settles onto what sounds like pavement. Every so often, barsounds blossom in the background when someone else exits.

"Are you just sitting on the front porch of some bar?"

"It's the back door. And bars don't have front porches."

Dean keeps him awake. They talk about Jack Nicholson's filmography, and alligator gar. Whether or not _Roswell_ had ever been worth watching. The likelihood that Sam will bleed into his brain and die. The new Metallica album, which somehow Sam had heard about but Dean had not, because it'd come up on NPR.

"Rock is dead," Dean announces.

Hours pass. The subject of paper cranes doesn't come up once. Sam is cognizant enough to know that Dean is drunk again, and Dean is drunk enough that you can hear it. But Sam is not cognizant enough to decipher what Dean means when he asks, "Did you lock your sailboat?"

"Dude, how drunk are you?"

"Not nearly enough," says Dean.

This is starting to become a problem, isn't it. Or maybe it's not. 

"You said the motel's shaped like boats, isn't it? Well, did you lock the door?" This last, Dean enunciates slowly, which ruffles Sam. He's not an idiot.

Except his door's unlocked, after all, and he is an idiot. To compensate, Sam does the extra mile and puts down rock salt. Scribbles a random selection of wardings on his porthole windows. Stuff they hadn't bothered with in a long, long time. But he figures it can't hurt. 

"Okay. My head's killing me, but I think I'm good. I'm gonna--"

"Don't hang up," Dean blurts out, with what seems to Sam is misplaced urgency. Dean's is the tone of voice people on TV use when a bomb has been wired into their phone. When the call ends, the bomb explodes. It's the tone people on TV use when, against all odds, they can hear the killer hiding in the shadows of a room they are not in.

Sam looks behind him. 

Nothing.

He almost asks Dean to turn around, too.

"Uh, why not?" Sam asks finally. "What do you want?"

"Don't go," says Dean. 

He offers his thoughts on _Roswell_ Season 2, episode 2.

And it kills Sam that he's not with Dean, can't read him--not in the same way. Because whatever Dean had wanted, Sam knows it wasn't _Roswell_ Season 2.

Another hour later, edging into 2AM in California and whatever hour, wherever Dean is, Sam's headache is unremitting but unchanged. Dean is significantly drunker now than he'd been when they started. It shouldn't make sense--being buzzed inside a bar then getting wasted after you've left it--but hey, BYOB is cheaper, and no one's watching.

No one, Sam thinks.

"Hey, gimme your keys," says Sam.

"Nice try, Cali boy. I don't do that phone sex roleplay thing."

"Fine. Just-- Sober up. Don't go anywhere. Don't do anything stupid."

"--was the original plan," Dean says, which is too aggressively past tense for Sam's taste.

"And the current plan? Dean, I'm serious."

"Dunno."

Sam hates this. He always has, but the potential consequences loom higher and stronger when Sam's a thousand miles away. 

"Dean, please. I'm not there to come save your ass." 

And no one else will know that Dean needs it.

Because Sam also hates that whether Dean listens or not, Dean will probably fine. Dean's probably not throwing furniture or falling over himself or weeping on the ground somewhere or whatever it is other drunks do. He could probably get up and walk to the car and be fine. He could probably hit the Interstate in that car and be fine. It doesn't mean he's okay. That this is okay. 

"Dean, this is what I mean when I say I hate pretending that any of this shit is normal."

When Sam pulls away from his phone, the call time is stuck at three hours, 42 minutes, and Dean's no longer on the other end. 

 

\--

 

Sam's call goes straight to voicemail the next morning. Twice. Three times.

And you know what? 'Probably fine' really isn't good enough.

Some hours of Sam trying not to think too hard about it later, he gets a call from an unknown number. On the other end is wind, and freeway, and the warning pings of a vehicle backing up--like a garbage truck, or an ambulance.

"Found some quarters," Dean rasps.

"Where the hell did you find a payphone?" asks Sam, even though it's not the question he cares about.

"Same place."

"Which is--?"

"I don't-- Don't ask hard questions."

He hasn't asked any. Meant to. Didn't.

When Sam asks why Dean didn't just charge is own goddamn phone--hours ago--Dean offers a semi-incoherent ramble about cables and electricity.

"Dean, I can't handle this. Do you know how stupid that sounds?"

"Lander," Dean says.

"Wh--"

"Lander, Wyoming. Oh, fuck me. No overnight parking, apparently. Think there's a ticket on the windshield over there--'cause this alley is prime fucking Wyoming real estate, obviously."

"It's not like you're gonna pay it," Sam reminds him. "Maybe you shouldn't spend the night in alleyways."

"I didn't think I--" Dean starts. Then he jumps backward, seems to fall into some pothole-like memory of the night before. "Are you okay?" he asks. "Your head--"

Sam says, "Probably gonna OD on ibuprofen, but yeah, I'm fine." 

Then Sam asks, "Do you think you are?"

Dean kicks his phone booth. Or at least--well, Sam supposes he's not entirely sure what Dean did. Dean makes blunt contact with his phone booth. He says, "It's gonna be fine."

But it's not, is it. Because what they mean when they say that word isn't actually what it means. It's not fine. 

 

\--

 

If Sam combs his hair out, you can't see the jagged cut or its generous clotting, but the comb comes away red and flaky. He doesn't have enough clothes for a load of laundry. He never does, when they're apart. 

He settles for the sink.

 

\--

 

Maybe it's because he's concussed, but probably not. Maybe it's because of the cranes, their endless monotony, their exile. Surely that's part of it. But Sam can feel himself slipping back into the nothing. Into the nothing, punctuated by Chopped marathons. He wonders if this is what it feels like if your brain stops before your heart. If you asphyxiate--your brain dark and drowned even after you float to the surface, even after they restart your heart. But never your brain.

Part of him thinks, _If I slip now, I take Dean with me._

Sam thinks about himself, all he'd been in the last year and all Dean had tried to do. He thinks, _I took Dean with me._

Sam thinks about Dean, and thinks, _He took me._

"Bruh, did you hit the rocks?" asks the cashier at CVS, when Sam buys more ibuprofen, a pack of Lifesavers, and a protein bar. Sam hypothesizes that every CVS cashier in America is the same person, waging the same inquisition.

The cashier brandishes his own forearm, which is similarly ravaged. His elbow is a tender pink where he'd picked off some of the scabs. "Fucked my board up, too," he says, while peering out the door. He's probably looking for Sam's surfboard. "Did the math and it's gonna take like two weeks' pay to fix it. Fuckin' sucks. Aren't you cold? It's like 50 degrees outside."

"My jacket's in the wash," says Sam. Then he asks, "Isn't it kinda cold to be surfing?"

The cashier shrugs. "If you good enough surfer, you ain't ever cold. Or if you surf bad enough, spend the whole time getting your ass whupped by the waves, y'know?"

"Which one are you?" asks Sam.

The cashier grins. "Dude, I fuckin' suck. But it's like, whatever, you know? I got this board for cheap off some UCLA dude on Craigslist and I figured like, shit, man. Why not?"

"Sure," says Sam. "Why not."

"Hey, is that your Wrangler out front? 'Cause it's pretty sick."

"No."

 

\--

 

When Sam gets back to his sailboat-shaped motel room and his jacket's moping in greywater and then his sink is clogged, he wishes he'd lingered with CVS guy longer. Small talk's not exactly his bread and butter, particularly not in CVSes and not with born-and-bred bruhs, but the exchange had felt necessary, somehow.

Like an anchor.

Sam thinks, If Dean were here, it would have been his conversation to have. That's always how it seems to go: Dean will make a supply run and in the two minutes it takes Sam to gas up the car, Dean will return from the mini mart with twenty minutes of local color to regale him with once they're back on the road.

Or not. Sometimes Dean just shoves money across the counter, toward a shape that's probably a body with a mouth that's probably full of bored, numb pleasantries. If the shape is lucky, Dean will respond to those pleasantries with a dismissive grunt.

Is there one of these that's more Dean? Dean, acting like himself? Not really, Sam figures. Dean's kind of both. 

When Sam strips his shirt--red flakes from his hair dusting the bathroom floor--the mirror shows Sam himself.

His burns have long since healed and scarred. Sam doesn't tend to scar much--a genetic gift rather than a lack of opportunity--but these have left a dramatic typography. As though without them, the curse worried that Sam might forget.

Sam sucks air between his teeth when the hot spray of the shower hits the cut on his scalp. The water pools at his feet, draining too slowly. Even over the aggressively clean smell of motel bar soap, his towel smells like mold. 

There is no forgetting.

It feels so stupidly maudlin, putting it that way. Shakespearean, even--star-crossed lovers fated to be forever apart, that sort of thing. Sam's sure Japan had more than its share of poet bards spinning similar tales with their own Romeos and Juliets, and he can understand why the narrative might inspire a witch's wrath. Misers aren't generally sympathetic to the joyous. 

Where he and Dean are concerned, "joyous" was already a stretch, but Sam knows that this is killing them. And that's the stupid part, really. No one’s actually dying. No one’s dead. They're _good,_ or they should be. They're just apart. There are normal people out there who do this every fucking day. Kiss their wife and kids goodnight and fly across the country to work a tech job, or whatever. This shouldn't matter as much as, apparently, it does.

It's hasn't even been two years yet--that is, the record Sam had set for them at Stanford. And even then, it's not like phones don't exist. In this day and age, it's not as though apart really means apart; Sam could call Dean from the mouth of an Icelandic fjord and close the gap instantly. They remind each other of this all the time.

Their ancient crane crone got nothin' on the twenty-first century. Or so Dean had said the other day.

Of course, this is almost the exact argument Sam had made before he'd set that record at Stanford. That phones were a thing--cellphones, even. That _Dean, it's not like I'm gonna disappear. And you can pick up the phone whenever you want, you know._

That argument hadn't worked then and it doesn't work now. Not even for Sam.

Sam's call goes to voicemail, but not before ringing, ringing. 

Dean's probably taking a piss. Or he's unconscious. Or maybe there's a monster, Dean's phone in hand. A smile worms its way across the monster's face as its fingers--humanoid, but just a little too long--fondle the device. The monster laughs, dismembering Dean Winchester with its eyes. All things in good time, it tells itself. Dean glares back, defiant. But together, they listen to the phone ring, watch Sam's name scroll across the screen, only to darken and vanish.

Sam rolls his eyes. This is stupid. That's definitely not what's happening right now. But Sam needs to know that Dean's okay, and a phone can't tell him that. The only thing a phone can give him is Dean's words, and those are only worth so much.

Dean picks up at the tail end of the second ring sequence. He does not sound dismembered.

"Are you still drunk?" Sam asks. Dean doesn't sound drunk, per se. He just sounds like Dean sounds when he's drunk. Sam wants to say Dean is a normal amount drunk, but he stops himself. Instead he says, _"Why?"_

'Why' is an impossible question, but it falls out anyway. (Remember, Sam, that one time Dean answered, _You_?)

"You've been introspecting, haven't you," says Dean. "Just like, all day."

"What does that even mean?"

"You tell me!"

Sam shakes his head. "I made one comment one time about some shit movie's _lack_ of introspection, and this is what it comes to." 

"It's all I have," says Dean.

"What?"

"The stupid things you say. They're all-- Never mind. How's the head?" Dean asks.

Sam shrugs, though Dean can't see it. His head is drowning. But he can't make the words come.

He says, "How's Wyoming?"

"Wyoming is fucked. Blizzard swept through the whole place today so I'm fishtailing all over the place and everyone and their F-350's pissing at me about snow tires. I hate this state."

"And that's why you're drinking." Sam's not sure why he says it. Maybe he's just saying words.

"Sure," Dean obliges. "I mean, what else am I going to do?"

"Pilates," Sam suggests. "Crossfit."

"Euchre," Dean adds.

 

\--

 

Dean's harder to get ahold of after that. Either that or it's getting harder for Sam to try. It's probably both.

Sam ends up in Tucson, sitting across the table from a woman named Vanessa. She'd been a serial babysitter of his long ago, and if Sam's being honest, he'd never liked her. Still, her cryptozoology is solid and she's still alive, and at a certain point that's all Sam really needs out of a person. She also doesn't make him burst into flames on sight.

She's sipping RC Cola through a red straw. She's wearing turquoise and leather like she belongs in Tucson, though Sam knows she grew up in Chicago. He hates that.

"Your brother still around?" she asks. The way she says it makes it sound like Dean shouldn't be. Sam hates that, too. 

"Thriving," he says.

"Good!" says Vanessa. Her enthusiasm seems genuine. Sam tries to remember she's probably seen a lot of dead, too. Vanessa continues, "I always thought he'd like, end up in college. Marry some girl." 

Sam must make a face, because she adds, "I mean, I probably woulda figured that for you, too. But you were like, a baby. You couldn't even read. Your dad kept saying, _This'll be over soon,_ and hell, I believed him. I figured y'all were getting out way before baby Sam was old enough to fuck. But here you are."

It's hard for Sam to imagine John a mere five years into his obsession, thinking it might be over soon. 

Thinking surely, it would be over soon. 

"He bought ammo off of me, once. Some state, I don't remember which--kept saying all he had was twenty dollars. Twenty dollars and your college fund. I dunno--guess he thought I'd care, 'cause I was eighteen and he was proofreading my college essays for me and stuff." Vanessa scrunches her nose. "But I didn't have any fuckin' college fund, so you know. Whatever."

It's even harder for Sam to imagine John reading anyone's college applications than it had been to imagine an end to demon hunting. 

"So you're the one," says Sam. "He told me how he used that money."

Vanessa affords him a crooked grin. "Only the first $500. Do you forgive me?"

But Vanessa doesn't really think she needs to be forgiven. The dance is just enough to make Sam feel four years old again, and for any vendettas to feel stupid.

"He promised himself it was a gonna be a one-time deal. Because soon, it was all gonna be over," says Vanessa. "Like we do, I suppose. But hey, Sam. We should exchange numbers--'cause you know it never is."

Then a guy yells into the cafe, "Yo, Menendez! You double-parked me!"

Vanessa laughs and yells back, "Just didn't want you going off and havin' any fun without me!"

"Til next time, babe," she says to Sam. She leaves enough money on the table to pay for both their lunches and prances out to meet her beau. Her beau probably thinks she's a perfectly acceptable person. He's probably right.

Sam still hates her.

 

\--

 

"She's still around?" Dean says of Vanessa, in roughly the same tone of voice she'd used to ask about him. He is drunk again.

"Thriving," Sam says. 

He can't stop thinking about things never being over, never being over. Vanessa, telling him it's never going to be over. Her laughter when she said it. 

"Dean, can we talk?"

"Mmm, depends. Battery's probably gonna die soon." 

Predictable excuse. But if Dean thinks that's all it's gonna take for Sam to back off, he hasn't been paying attention.

"Fine. No softballs. This is bullshit, Dean. The drinking's out of hand. Everything behind the drinking. You can't just let this fucking--play out. It's like you're--"

"Then what the fuck are you doing?" Dean bites back, ever volatile, before Sam's even said his piece. "Huh, Sam?"

Sam says nothing. This isn't where he thought this conversation was going.

"And that whole time, last year? What was that? What do you want me to do, Sam? Just start sending you one word fucking text messages 40 years later? That your ideal, here? How was that not letting it 'play out'?" 

"Don't use that against me again," Sam says, throat tight. He swears they've already been over this. But here's Dean, still licking his wounds like it happened yesterday.

"Make me understand this time," Dean implores. "Because what the fuck, Sam--"

"I was doing my best," Sam says.

"Cool. Gonna need a little more than 'doing my best.' What am I supposed to say to that?" 

"Why would you need to say anything?"

"You wanted to talk!"

"About _you_."

Dean hangs up. 

 

\--

 

At 4AM, Dean texts back.

 _battery died,_ he lies.

Timestamped eighteen minutes later, once he's sure Sam's not awake to reply, he says, _i cant do my best_

 _me neither,_ Sam replies anyway.

An hour after that, Dean says, _whats 1 rung down?_


	7. Chapter 7

"I just wanted you to be okay," says Dean, when they can talk to each other again. Dean wanted so badly for Sam to be okay, but there wasn't any way for him to make it happen. And Dean couldn't handle that. And then Dean couldn't handle not handling that.

So here they are.

This makes Sam feel like it's Sam's fault. Everything is Sam's fault: What's happening with Dean. What Sam couldn't and cannot surmount. Everything. But Sam doesn't tell Dean that. He knows it's not true. This is not his fault. That knowledge doesn't matter. So he doesn't tell Dean, and then he doesn't tell Dean. Sam means this omission as a kindness.

Nevertheless, what happens in the next few weeks does not proceed at the slow burn pace of the last two years. It's like overnight, Dean goes from obstinate and reckless and self-medicating to definitely on the twilight side of binge drinking. He's not in control anymore, if ever he was.

It's not that Dean gives up. In the same way that asking _whats 1 rung down?_ is not the same thing as finding a ladder and climbing it, losing Dean is not a freefall, even if it's quick. 

That's probably the stupidest thing about all of this: Dean is trying so, so hard. And it doesn't matter. 

It's the sort of thing that gets away from you before you can realize what's happening. By the time anyone can tell, it's a little too late.


	8. Chapter 8

Maybe for some, addiction is the bottom of an icy ditch somewhere--a blizzard, a wrecked car. A body. But just as often, Sam thinks, it's the slow digging of a grave. A grave that's six feet down, exactly; it has even edges, sharp corners. The sides don't crumble. The casket fits perfectly. 

It's not the kind of grave that only takes one night. It's not the kind where you're just there to burn the bones. It's a labor of love. It's _Not today, you fucks._ It's _I've got some time to kill._

Until suddenly, you don't.

And Sam is alone.

The first thing that becomes clear is that Dean can't do the job, which is probably what scares Sam most. Dean can't focus. Can't string together a concerted plan of action. But, Sam reasons--and if this sounds like desperation Sam can't exactly deny that--there have always been days where that's been true. Right? Certain spans of time. When it really mattered--Apocalypses being nigh and all--Dean would always pull it together. 

Sam tries to focus on that.

Every time Sam kills a crane, he sends Dean a text. _Got one._ It takes more effort now than it had before, when it felt like they'd been everywhere. _Got another._ Like they were calling Sam to them. But if Sam refuses thought of anything else, if he focuses on whatever cosmic trill the cranes are putting out, he can find them. _Another one bites the dust._

At first, the text messages are galling enough that Dean does pull it together. It takes a couple weeks, but one Tuesday in March, Dean texts back, _Not alone pal. Got 1 too_

 _Gonna catch up?_ Sam replies. 

A long time ago, he remembers asking, _First to fifty?_

The answer, almost immediately, is no. Dean can't make it stick. 

In Sam's mind he could've fixed this, if he could've been there. This isn't where they would have ended up if he could've just-- _been_ \--

As Sam sloshes out to the middle of a vernal pool, drowns a crane that had become part of a real bird's nest, he thinks, it's a good thing these paper birds are only scars. Remnants. All their damage has been done.

It's enough, he thinks. It's already enough.

 

\--

 

"This is not gonna be what kills you," says Dean, when Sam changes tack, and tells Dean exactly how he feels. What his guilt is doing to him. Dean says, "This is not gonna be what kills you," and that's it. He's done. He's said his piece.

It's not good enough.

"What about you?" Sam asks.

"They're dumbass cranes. They're only paper. Pretty harmless, dude."

"What about you?" Sam asks.

"What, are you asking if I wanna die?"

Sam frowns. Weird segue. "Do you?"

"I will if every round of 20 Questions is this fucking depressing," Dean says. 

Sam counts his own breaths. 

Six. Seven. 

Eight.

"I mean, it'd be easier if I did," Dean says.

"What would be easier?"

"Name me one thing that wouldn't."

"Not being dead, Dean. Not being dead would be a lot harder."

"There'd be no more curse, though," Dean points out. He's just so _clinical_ about it.

"I would rather be on fire," says Sam. 

"Jesus, Sam. Are you o--"

"Just stop talking."

"Oh, come on. I was just saying. Do you seriously think that I'd--"

"I'm hanging up."

 

\--

 

His hands are shaking. He's not sure why he ever wants Dean's honesty.

It's not even a big deal, he tells himself. It's not even a big deal and Dean hadn't even really said anything because that's just how he talks because Dean's a morbid fuck and none of this is really that big a deal and nothing of that conversation meant anything at all. But here are Sam's hands jittering, his breaths shallow. His face and chest feel heat like a pyre and his back goes cold. It hits like a Montana storm, all lightning in an instant. There's a maelstrom in his stomach so powerful it pulls all the air down. Sam's lungs can't resist the suction.

Shaking hands find sweaty nose and he steeples his fingers over this face and his thumbs find his jawbone.

Generally speaking, it takes a lot to scare Sam. But he knows terror when he feels it.

Once he's recovered, Sam picks up his phone again. His first instinct is to get back in the game.

But he knows how this plays out.

It wasn't a big deal, Dean will insist. Out of nowhere. Even though they're not talking about it yet. For all that Dean would love to pretend that nothing happened, he knows Sam's pissed; and he's not actually that good at ignoring that.

What wasn't a big deal? Sam will ask, and Dean will glare at him.

No, Dean glares at his phone. Dean hasn't glared at Sam in two years.

So Sam will concede. Sort of. He'll explain. It was a big deal to me, he'll say.

And Dean, defensive: Just 'cause you _think_ it was doesn't mean--

I'm not talking about you, Sam cuts in. 

Sam says: I'm talking about me.

And how would Dean respond to that? he wonders.

Sam's phone chimes.

_sorry_

"Fuck you," Sam mutters at his phone.

Because Sam's going to lose him, isn't he. 

It hits him: One way or another, they aren't going to make it out the other end of this, and it won't even be for a good reason, like rending the Darkness; or sparing the planet from--if not Original Sin, then at least Cain's tertiary one. Whatever. Sealing Hell. Foreclosing Purgatory. Settling the Apocalypse. Not that any of those sound like particularly good reasons at the moment, but the martyr in Sam can't be entirely jaded about heroism. 

This isn't heroism. This will just be them setting up a game of attrition and losing.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam's terror is part rage. He's furious, when he thinks about it. Dean's insistent self-destruction. The level of vindictive pleasure he seems to get from it all, like some kid sneering, _Ha! You thought I wouldn't jump off that cliff, but I did!_ Then sending a pointless text that affords Sam nothing.

_sorry_

A grudging apology; a flippant one. A guilty one. An apology of obligation, for some hurt Dean doesn't understand. Or it could be heartfelt; Sam reasons that on some level, Dean probably does mean it. He doesn't want to hurt Sam. But sometimes Sam feels like apologies are only an expression of self-loathing, and that Sam hates most of all.

Sam's terror is part guilt, because he knows it's not Dean's fault. The only reason Sam is losing Dean now is because he didn't lose him sooner. There are too many things that should have killed Dean years ago; it's just that now the bill is coming due--in bursts of violence and alcoholism, just like Dean always said they would. Sam knows this but he's still angry; and so he's guilty. He feels guilt because Sam can scream _we don't get to quit_ , and _we don't get to say no_ all he wants, but it feels just as hollow now as it does when Sam shouts at himself.

Because yeah they do. They don't owe anyone but themselves, and pain deserves release.


	10. Chapter 10

"Wow, still around?" says Vanessa in Sam's dreams. She is pleasantly surprised. It's not that she wants them dead; but she'd understand if they were.

"Let's face it. We're definitely living bonus material here," Dean agrees.

"You love the special features," Sam would say, if it didn't feel stupid. Sam wants to be metaphor exactly as much as he wants to be dead.


	11. Chapter 11

Pain, Sam's not gonna lose to. 

He'll do whatever it takes to save them both.


	12. Chapter 12

Sam digs in. He makes the whole world power down around him until the only thing he can feel is the infinitesimal pull of these--harmless--paper cranes.

Because they are harmless, aren't they, he thinks, as he turns one into mush in a flooded pothole. They are silly, stupid little things, but every time they beat their wings he feels like a part of him and Dean crumbles. They are everything they have and they can't have each other.

Sam funnels his vision ever narrower. He can't think about Dean. He can't think about Sam. He puts everything on hold until the only thing that exists is the magic that binds him. He thinks in flows of energy, in magnetism. One by one, he hunts them down, in a halting, jagged dance across the country. A dozen. Fifteen. Twenty-four.

He thinks in numbers. In vectors. In the application of force. In ideal systems--no gravity, no friction, no memory, and no pain. He lets the cranes burn in his hands until his skin calluses instead of bleeding.

The less Sam thinks about Dean, the easier it is to function. It's better this way, he tells himself.

Sam finds a crane caught in the hair of a girl who is already dead. Open casket--white gloves on her hands. Sam dips down low to pinch the life from it. When he leaves, he tells the girl's mother that he was one of her social studies teachers. The mother nods numbly. 

For three days, Sam wakes up wishing he hadn't lied.

Sam goes, and goes, and goes.

At number 337, the mechanism of him stops. There is no more energy to follow. Sam can't feel the next crane. At first, it only feels like stillness. He sinks without his current. Then Sam remembers he is more than machine. He exists outside of his task. He's spent so long existing so far outside of himself at first he doesn't recognize he's been gone.

It takes him another few days to recognize what this might mean.

He might be free. 

The thousand cranes might be zeroed. This could all be over.

The next morning, 500 miles east in Moab, Utah, Sam wakes up and again feels nothing. Another morning and another 500 miles, this time in Alliance, Nebraska, Sam again feels nothing.

There are no fireworks. There's no fanfare. But they might finally be free.

Sam digs out his phone.

 

\--

 

"Thought we weren't talking," Dean greets him.

"Did you decide that on your own?"

"I pissed you off. I _know_ I pissed you off. Don't play dumb."

When Sam turns the TV on, the local news is celebrating Father's Day. Somehow it's June. Sam's not sure where spring went. He never did reply to Dean's _sorry_.

"Happy birthday," says Dean.

"It's June," says Sam.

"Glad we're on the same page now," says Dean.

It's June. It's been three months.

"I've been busy," is all Sam says. "How are you?"

"Why'd you call, Sam? What do you want?"

"So you're just going to be pissed at me all over again?"

"I'm not pissed," Dean says, sounding pissed. "Just tired."

Sam frowns. 

Dean does sound tired. More than his usual tired--as if Sam would know Dean's usual anything anymore. 

This isn't the triumphal phone call Sam had had in mind. He's supposed to be setting them free.

"What's up with you?" Sam asks, trying to recalibrate. Find his bearings.

"Dunno."

Dean sounds not okay.

It occurs to Sam that somewhere along the line, he'd forgotten that Dean was the person he'd been trying to save. He doesn't like thinking Dean can't save himself. 

He doesn't like feeling like he has to save himself first. He's been in his head so long he feels like their conversation his happening in a second language. He's not ready.

"Where are you?" Sam asks, with effort.

"Dunno." 

Sam hears the crinkling of paper. Maybe Dean shouldn't have been so quick to judge Sam's sense of time. It seems Sam's not the only one who's not ready for a conversation.

"Nebraska," Dean says finally. "Gas is $2.11 a gallon. Lincoln."

"I'm in Alliance," says Sam. This is the first time they've shared a state in a while--possibly since that first week in Oregon. Once the curse had taken hold it hadn't let them get even this close. It's a good sign. "That's actually why I called."

"Your exciting vacation in Alliance, Nebraska?"

"Can you feel it?"

"I feel like I'm gonna puke on the floor," says Dean, about three seconds before he realizes he hadn't meant to admit that. He sucks in air through his teeth.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm guessing not."

"Are you drunk?"

"Tried to be."

"Dean."

" _Sam,_ " Dean snaps. He's not so out of it exasperation is beyond him. But all he follows up with is, "I dunno. Sammy, I dunno--"

"Dean," Sam says, not with calm. "If you die in a Nebraska motel room because--"

"Give me a day."

"What the hell is that supposed to--"

"Give me a day."

 

\--

 

This is not how this is supposed to go. Sam is supposed to be setting them free. He pushed through. They _made_ it. 

He's supposed to be setting them free.

 

\--

 

Sam gives Dean three days. If Dean had been expecting to spring back, good as new, that is not what happens. He stays down. 

Dean on the phone is not anywhere near as forthcoming as a doctor's chart, but Sam can gather that it's not good, exactly--in a way Dean had not quite anticipated. But he's handling this, he says. Just give him another day. One more.

"It's been long enough," says Sam. "Get in the car."

"What?"

Something's gotta give, and it has to be now. Sam can't take it anymore. He's supposed to be setting them free.

They only need to make it a little further, and they'll be okay.

They're going to be okay.

"Can you drive?" Sam asks. When Dean says yes, Sam believes him. He sounds about a day shy of comfortably coherent, and if Sam were to give it to him, Dean would probably be fine--for another few days, weeks, months. Who knows how long. Not long enough. Sam knows they're only going to end up here again, and he's not going to stand on the sidelines and watch Dean trough and crest, trough and crest, until the day he can't come up for air anymore.

Sam takes a deep gulp of air.

"Get in the car, and get on US-6. West. The curse is over. I just killed the last crane."

Sam doesn't say 'a week ago.' He doesn't say 'I'm actually not sure that I did.' He doesn't explain how he knows it's the last, because there's no explanation he can give. Sam doesn't know. But it's not like Dean does, either--he can't check Sam's work. He doesn't have the answers. He is not the power in the universe that can make sure everything's gonna be okay.

Sam knows that if he waits, he loses Dean for sure. Slowly but inexorably, like water through his fingers. And he can't-- Sam can't do that anymore. That's what will destroy him.

So he says, "It's over, Dean. I got you--I got you. Get on the road and drive."

Dean doesn't fight him.

Red flag, Sam thinks.

No.

That's trust, isn't it. 

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Sam double-checks. He feels for the tug and tingle of the cranes and finds nothing. If there are any cranes left out there, they are too fucking far away to matter, Sam's decided. He can handle a little heat. If being together stays dangerous at the edges, it's not like they needed a curse to make it so.

The way Sam sees it, they have a choice: Drown or burn. And fire's a fate Sam knows he can beat.

 

\--

 

Sam's probably still a mile away when it happens. He's still watching the odometer tick up, his heart leaning harder and harder against his ribs, as though it too wants to see their progress. They are so close.

But of course, _of course_ this isn't where, or how, this ends.

Because then Dean calls. His call is a tangle of expletives and 'STOP.' 

STOP STOP STOP.

Sam doesn't think he can ever admit this, but it takes him a second or two to slam on the brakes. Dean is screaming at him, STOP, _jesus fuck sam stop,_ but for the first few seconds, Sam doesn't. Because what if they just take the hit and power through anyway? This is what they do. This is what they're worth to each other. This is what Sam tells himself.

His mind objects, _we're so close_. Its impulse is to keep going, reach their goal in spite of the pain. Pain is an obstacle to be overcome; and if they can just get far enough, then no pain will matter. If they can just--

"STOP."

This is how you beat fire. You don't turn away.

"SAM, _STOP."_

Sam slams the brake pedal so hard his seat belt knocks the wind out of him. He swerves off-road, down a bank full of Nebraska sunflowers, back up a bank full of Nebraska sunflowers, and accelerates back down a straight, black, US-6. He doesn't stop until he starts to feel lightheaded, and that straight black line bows and twists. 

He shudders. His disappointment is visceral.

"What went wrong?" Sam asks. He's not sure where is phone went. It flew off the passenger seat when he hit the brakes. Now it's on the floor somewhere. "What went wrong?" he asks, louder. 

"My fucking eyeballs," moans Dean. It sounds like his voice coming from under Sam's seat. "Whataboutyou? Are you--"

"I'm f--" Sam grunts as he cranes over the center console to reach for his phone. When he gets back upright, however, the console is streaked with blood. Sam looks down at his shirt. He shudders again.

"Sammy?" Dean asks, muffled.

"Fuck," says Sam.


	13. Chapter 13

Sam is fire, every hair on his body a wick. His skin pools glassy like wax and melts from his bones until his body becomes skeleton. Sam is fire. He leaves his skeleton behind.

Somewhere, Dean strikes a match. He's standing at the edge of a newly turned grave, dark enough to drown in. He says, "Look what I made."

 

\--

 

At the hospital in Broken Bow, Sam's intake chart reads, "struck by lightning." It's the only explanation the nurse can think of for that kind of third-degree burn.

 

\--

L  
O  
O  
K

  
  
  
  


I C A N ' T  
S  
E  
E  
Y O U


	14. Chapter 14

When Sam wakes, he's at the hospital in Broken Bow. Not in an oxygen chamber, or a sterile room--he's in his car. In his car, in the parking lot, because he hasn't kept up with the intricacy that is insurance fraud these days, and he can't afford the co-pay anyway. A farmer, caught in a lightning storm last April, had done the same. At least, that's what Sam's nurse said.

Sam doesn't think the burn is that bad. Not that it should be, considering the heat source was a mile away, and it was his brother, not a lightning bolt. Once he gets some fluids in him, and some blood, Sam only feels just south of ( _it was his brother_ ) shitty. The next steps are so rote Sam can do them without thinking. ( _His--_ )

Sam needs gauze. He needs a sandwich. There's a whole hierarchy but Sam needs to set realistic goals. Sam needs ( _his--_ )

A sandwich, he can get.

Start there, he reminds himself.

That his brother isn't blind at this point is some kind of miracle. Start there.

"Seeing auras is still seeing," he says aloud. "So there's that."

"Tell that to my fucking migraine," says Dean. He mutters something about not needing more shit to deal with. He's a mess.

"So you're still--"

"If you're on some kind of glass-half-full kick, let's say yeah."

"How is that glass-half-full?"

"Because then if it goes away, it's a miracle."

"Jesus, Dean. I get it. I won't use that word next time. Your weird obsession with my wording is getting kind of annoying, you know."

"It's because I can't see your hair. I need something else to make fun o--"

"Drinking can aggravate migraines."

"Wow. Really just slid that in there."

"Pain isn't something you should have to live with," Sam says, as plainly as possible. 

_"O_ kay, Extra Crispy," Dean snorts. 

Sam can hear the faint glug of a flask. The smack of Dean's lips when he's done. As though his body hadn't learned its lesson these past few days. Of course it hadn't. Neither of them ever do.

"Sam, lemme ask you something," Dean says.

"No," says Sam, for the hell of it. Dean ignores him.

"Why'd you take a run at it?" Dean asks. "Why were you so sure, right here, right now, that the curse was over?"

Sam imagines himself fire. Fire, leaving his bones. Leaving before the sheer density of them could pull him down. Down where, he's not sure. Just down.

"I felt like if I didn't, I was going to drown," Sam says. 

"What about now?" is all Dean asks. "Are you--"

"Now I just feel extra crispy," says Sam, deadpan. He feels raw. He feels beaten. And he feels stupid. "You?"

"Well, _now_ I'm kinda hungry. Could go for some fried chicken."

"That's disgusting."

"Don't be a wuss, Sam. Chicken's chicken."

Sam smiles. Dean sounds exhausted, though. The energy he started his sentence with just isn't there at the finish. And it happens that quickly--as though the second Dean can ascertain Sam is doing okay, he gives out. And they're right back where they'd been before. 

Dean goes silent.

Sparks flew, flames erupted--they had endured, for all intents and purposes, their curse's climax. And it didn't matter. There is no reprieve, no change of course. They're right back to the edge of the grave again.

Sam lost. Their story marches on, track unchanged. Like it didn't even blink at his incursion.

Sam tries to pull Dean back. He's not ready to lose. He wants Dean to blow up his phone with dumb shit and have an unnecessarily good memory for TV he doesn't like. He wants Dean to dredge up dumb games neither of them had liked. He wants Dean to watch all the commercials, no matter how many times Sam brings up Ad Blocker.

He wants Dean to be here.

"So we'll talk in an hour then? After you go get your chicken?" he prompts.

Dean grunts noncommittally. 

"Why didn't you stop me?" Sam asks, to fill the void. "If you thought we were headed for wipeout. Why'd you let me take that run?"

If Sam wanted Dean to say his piece about trust, about faith, about hope, Dean doesn't.

Dean takes a deep breath. The throaty, organic Deanness of it is only static and white noise on Sam's end. He says, "This is the stupidest thing that's ever happened to us."

Sam chuffs. "That's not glass-half-full."

"I'm not kidding. This is-- The stupidest--"

"Go get your chicken, Dean."

Nothing.

"Dean."

_"Dean."_

"Mm."

"Are you okay?"

"Mmmhm."

"Hey."

Nothing.

"Dean, it's going to be okay."

Dean takes another swig from his flask. "Sure is," he says.

It bothers Sam, in that moment, that he can't hear Dean breathe. He's not in the room to see the rise and fall of Dean's shoulders, the twitch of his boots as he jerks from sleep again, again, again. He doesn't know if there's a room at all.

"Where are you right now?" Sam asks.

Sam's in a cafe. When he looks down, there's a sandwich in front of him he doesn't remember ordering. Its cheese, once toasted and melting, is cold and waxy. The ice in his water is gone, cup sitting in a puddle of its own condensation. If he's not in the room with Dean, Sam hadn't been in this one, either.

"My phone's--" Dean mumbles.

"Maybe you need a new phone. Seeing as your battery keeps dying at all these inconvenient moments," says Sam.

"Fuck off," says Dean.

"I'm sorry," says Dean. "Sam, I'm sorry."

It's the last thing he says before dropping off the face of the goddamn planet.


	15. Chapter 15

That's not accurate. Sam should be more specific, since these days slipping out of universe and dimension has been either threat or reality more often than it hasn't.

Dean is in Houghton, Michigan. He stopped answering his phone a week ago--though he's extended the courtesy of not locking Sam out of his phone's location services. He knows Sam can't chase him.

Dean is in Houghton, Michigan, and Sam is in Denton, Texas when Sam says, in a message that likely drops straight onto the cutting room floor of Dean's voicemail, "Haven't heard from you in a few days. Call me."

Sam's thoughts idle. They dredge up memory: Dean, unannounced. Telling him Dad hadn't been home in a few days. Sam had rounded up, assumed Dean meant a week or two. It took Dean nearly a day to admit he hadn't heard from Dad in months, plural (if only barely). Then Mom, born-again but fleeting. In and out, moving in accordance with her own whims and always texting Dean before him.

And now Dean. 

Dean's the most and least dependable person Sam knows. It's kind of a family trait. They always end up here.

( _You first,_ a voice inside him whispers. _You first, Sam._ But it's not the same thing. It's just not. If Dean had called, he would have picked up. 

At least, he's pretty sure.)

Dean does not call. In Texas, Sam wakes at 3AM--Michigan's 4AM, and historically, Dean's primetime--and stares at his phone, thinking Dean might. But sometimes what seems like serendipity is only sleeplessness, and if Sam woke up at 3AM for a reason, it wasn't a good one. Dean does not call the next day, either.

Sam is worried at first, autonomously. He feels the same kind of pervasive, unshakable dread that once accompanied his psychic visions--except now it's not because of premonitions. It's reflex.

He should be cooler under pressure than this. It should feel old hat, and they should trust each other. And on some level, he is; it does; and they do. But Dean has always mounted a poor defense against himself, and Sam's too tired to root for the underdog.

It had taken Dean fourteen hours to drive to Houghton, in an erratic blitz the day after their last phone conversation. Not that that's unusual in itself; but he also hasn't moved from within a few--well, Sam's not sure what the scale of the Maps app is, but Dean's stayed within pixels of his original stopping point. Either he is hunting the world's most sluggish, geological formation of a monster, or he's not doing shit. Dean charges his phone often enough to not be dead.

Sam dials again. "Fuck you, answer the phone."

Then he hangs up.

Sam spends the next week becoming depressingly knowledgeable of Houghton, Michigan's goings-on. He tells himself he's looking for the case, though Houghton's primary trouble seems to be its lack of local copy editors, and the fact that one woman named Marie apparently has unlimited access to the Letters to the Editor section. Marie has many opinions. On the other hand, Marie never writes in to say that that tourist shouldn't have driven his car into Lake Superior, so at least there's that. Houghton's tourist is alive and well.

"Jesus." Sam closes out the tab displaying Dean's credit statement. Houghton's tourist spent enough at Houghton's gas mart to feed a family of twelve. The statement isn't itemized, but Sam's not certain any of it is actual, solid food.

By the third week, Sam's annoyed. Over the weekend, Dean skips town. Drags himself from Houghton to Sioux Falls. Sam expects a call from Jody; doesn't get one. When Sam checks the app again, Dean is in Topeka. There, he finds another sinkhole.

Sam's annoyed, because this is it, isn't it. He's come up against that edge over and over again, and he thinks this every single damn time; every time, he thinks this is it. This is rock bottom. Then the floor falls out. And there's nothing Sam can do about it. 

Dean doesn't call. 

Maybe Sam doesn't have the right to be annoyed-- _you first_ \--but here's the thing. Sam doesn't terrify himself the way that Dean can terrify him. That's the simple truth of it, and for once Sam doesn't care if logic has a part to play or not.

In a mockery of hope, Sam entertains the notion, not for the first time, that it's not Dean. A monster jumped his skin and it's a demon, a ghost, riding around. Or Marie of Houghton stole Dean's phone. And credit card. Maybe Marie of Houghton _is_ the demon. Maybe it goes back even further than that, and all it will take to bring his brother back is some holy water and an exorcism. But Sam knows that this is 100% Dean. It just is. 

Even if he hadn't been sure, he'd have known weeks ago if a monster had taken his brother. If there were any benefit to infamy, it's that it makes your enemies slightly more predictable. If a monster had taken Dean out--or taken him, period--one of them would have come knocking for Sam long ago. Not like he's hiding, and the only thing worse than two Winchesters is a single vengeful one.

But they don't even give him that. Dean doesn't give him that. There's no vengeance to hold onto this time.

By the time it occurs to Sam to look up, he's already underwater. 

The sun wobbles red above him.

 

\--

 

 _Did some hiking,_ Sam texts. He does the work of imagining the snarky comeback that Dean never sends. Sam's at the top of a red mesa somewhere along the Grand Canyon and high up again, he has cell service. He can send a text message from from the middle of nowhere and Dean, for the fucking life of him, can't reply back.

If Sam is being technical, he is doing some hiking--present-tense. He left his Wrangler at the North Rim, and his game plan is to hike down and up the canyon yet again.

The group of girls he'd run into at the halfway point is taking selfies, #nofilter but for elation. All blonde, late twenties. ASU tees. A reunion of sorority sisters, if he had to guess. They'd made friends with another hiker--dude in a do-rag; scruffy beard, GoPro, Tevas. Alaskan. He'd had a lot of fishing stories. Sam had none he cared to offer.

"You into nature?" asks the Alaskan.

Sam admits he'd done some birdwatching in California a while back. He's done birdwatching all over, actually.

"That's cool, Sam," says the Alaskan. He doesn't think it's cool. Sam figures at least they can agree on that.

Suddenly, one of the girls starts crying, struck suddenly by the immensity of the canyon, the fact of its natural wonder. The sheer profundity of her experience. Truly, Sam doesn't remember most of the hike, though his calves will. It had been hot. It had looked mostly like the inside of his head.

"Beers?" asks the Alaskan. Before Sam can decline, the girls cheer in unison. "Fuck it," says the Alaskan. "I'm so fucking dehydrated. I just want a cocktail. Can you ladies pick me the girliest cocktail?"

"I want to eat my weight in cheddar biscuits!" announces one of the girls.

Sam disinvites himself.

He slips back to the trailhead and, as the sun is sets, begins his descent into the canyon once more. It gets dark quickly, until the sweat between him and his pack actually feels cold. His water still clings to his throat like bathwater. This time around, Sam sees the Grand Canyon at the level of its rocks, cairns peppering his path and sand grinding between his toes. He sees only what his flashlight gives him, sand bleached pink by its LED and the rest of the world blacker than black.

He's not sure what he's doing.

The canyon becomes less a vision than a feeling, the ache of his shoulders competing with the thudding pain in his feet, his knees. He's been trained to take a beating, not to hike, and his bones know it. The skin on his pinky toes shreds to nothing, blisters on blisters and then blood. Each mile is like a strike to the head of a spoke, boring longways through his bones. Still, Sam hikes. Mile after mile after mile.

Sam's Grand Canyon is not an encounter with the sublime. It probably should be--blaze of glory, riding into the sunset. Whatever way you cut it, the Grand Canyon should be game to deliver a fitting ending. Granted, slipping to his death or collapsing from dehydration would not be a fitting ending, even by Sam's morbid estimations. But he knows that's not going to happen. He is not afraid.

On the trail, in the dark, alone, Sam denatures. The sublime requires terror and Sam feels nothing at all. Not even the pain. He almost enjoys it. Pushing through makes Sam feels like he's winning. He could hike forever.

He might hike forever.

 

\--

 

But the pain comes back when the sun does, when Sam finds himself mangled in the back of his Wrangler, blinking against the morning's piercing light. He's so sore he can hardly move and he does not remember ascending the canyon. His feet are too swollen to extract from his boots. He can't fold enough to reach them anyway.

Sam checks his phone instead. Voicemail, or the ghost of one. The icon blares red at him but there's nothing in his mailbox, its packets lost in the expanse between Sam's mesa and the nearest cell tower. He turns his phone off and on again, like a technological seance, only to discover it's a robocall. Not Dean.

Fuck it, he thinks.

Whatever.

Sam dumps himself out of his Wrangler and stumbles to the driver's side door. His body's screaming _stop, stop_ but of course he doesn't, because he never does.

It's stupid, isn't it. He treats pain like an obstacle to overcome, rather than a warning. They both do. It's as though exercising their free will is just another way of naming their desire to chase hurt. 

Great things have been won by blood and tears, and blood and tears alone. Great things have required sacrifice.

But not always, Sam thinks.

 

\--

 

He's not supposed to make it out of the Canyon. But he does. He meets Kayla, and Chandra, and Aliyah. He meets an Alaskan who hates birdwatching. 

He can't find a good cross to die on.

 

\--

 

Eventually, spontaneously, Dean calls, as though no time had passed, and there hadn't been 90 or so of Sam's messages he'd never answered. The way Dean does. He starts in the middle of a conversation Sam's sure they'd never begun, pretending as though everything is fine. It's not.

"--found someone in Pennsylvania who actually calls it a moor. Unironically. So then--"

A soundtrack of clinking spoons and diner white noise hovers under the eaves of Dean's words. It sounds like home. But not.

 _Glad you're not dead,_ Sam could say. But he'd been able to know that without Dean telling him.

 _Glad you're okay._ But Dean's not.

 _Aren't you glad I am? Did you ever wonder?_ Those are big ones, but they're not actually what's on Sam's mind today. Maybe they should be. They're not. 

This is not the version of Dean Sam wants to bare his soul to, anyway. This whole time, Dean's been rambling about god knows what, and there's an frenetic edge to his voice that Sam doesn't like.

"Black coffee, the special?" Sam butts in. 

"Chiles relleno," says Dean, with an accent straight out of that one DVD with the maraca porn.

"...In Pennsylvania?" He tries to keep his tone as staid as possible. Tries to slow Dean down. Get him to remember, maybe, that he's been the one ghosting Sam for fucking months on end now.

"Tucumcari," Dean blurts, staccato. "Pennsylvania was yesterday. Keep up, Sam. --Sweetheart, can I get a refill? Double shot?"

Then, at a speed set by too much coffee and not enough sleep, Dean explains that fairies are the key to everything. See, if you've been to the fairy realm, you can see fairies, right? But if you're _in_ the fairy realm I bet you can see a crapload of other shit--including the trails left by their paper crane friends. And that's the ticket. See, the fairy realm isn't a universe--it's an, it's a realm. And that's the ticket, Sam. That's the ticket. 

Dean goes on to poorly explain the difference. It's not a universe; it's a realm. (Like a VR overlay except it it's not. Except it is, but it's not. Except--)

If Dean were anyone else, it would sound like he was having a psychotic break. Honestly, it still does, even if Sam allows that fairies are very much real.

"You can kinda see this stuff in our world but not really. It's like an astigmatism. How many optometrists do you figure are just fairies incognito? Helping keep the realm on the DL?"

“Statistically?” Sam says. "Probably like, one. Fairies aren’t really the med school type.”

"Huh. Guess that makes zero now, then. Had to leave Philly quick; that's why I'm in Tucumcari."

They haven't been talking that long, but Dean’s losing his voice. Sam would guess he hasn't used it in a while.

“So is that where you’ve been all this time?” Sam asks. “The fairy realm?” 

He's not really asking, he supposes. He just wants to see what Dean will say. Time works differently across realms, after all. Dean could make the argument that by his count, it's been hours, not weeks, and the fairy realm is not covered in their phone plan. _Sorry, Sammy._

But Dean says, “No, I wasn't.”

A clumsy pause. Then, “I told you. I drove to New Mexico.” 

It's not a lie, but if it's an excuse, its logic escapes Sam. 

Sam wonders if this is what he'd sounded like, right before he'd driven them both into the sun. Sam did not think he could hear from Dean and feel worse. Dean feels like a stranger over the phone. He's just words that don't make sense; he's not Sam's brother. He's not Dean. Except he is; but he's not. Except he is.

Dean is not the person who'd walked into that house with Sam, side by side. Gone up to the attic, gun drawn, only to find it useless. He's not the person who'd held Sam tight.

He is who Sam has.

 _I can't fix this from here,_ Sam thinks.

If Sam were in Tucumcari, Dean would stare at him. Hard. Willing him to look away. And when he didn't, Dean would. He'd swirl rice into his tomato sauce and cut into his chile with the side of his fork. If Sam were in Tucumcari and had more at his disposal than his voice, and if Dean had less at his disposal than simply hanging up, Sam would pay for the chiles. He'd grab Dean's arm (oh god, can he imagine? being that close again?) and drag him from his diner stool. Dean would resist. He'd stand his ground for a second or four. Then he'd tip the waitress higher than Sam had, as though that were the root of his resistance all along. As though that's what this were all about--Sam being a dick, tipping 10% instead of 20. They would not get in the car. Sam's lost too many arguments by getting in that car, only to have Dean pretend that he needed to focus in order to be able to drive. A conversation? Unthinkable.

In a parking lot outside a diner in Tucumcari, they'd talk.

But Sam's in Tuba City, and they don't.

Sam shakes his head, clears himself of the fantasy. The problem's not that Sam's in Tuba City, as much as that sucks, and as much as Tuba City sucks. If he and Dean were both in Tucumcari, this would all go exactly the same. Sam would probably get in that car. 

They can't blame everything on the cranes. This is the curse they've given themselves.

In Tuba City, Arizona, two little girls in big floppy safari hats pass by Sam's window. Two women follow, in neon shirts that say Tech-Lite across their chests. They have water reservoirs on their backs and bottles of sunscreen in their hands. They seem so effortlessly together.

"Dean, you sound really fucked up," Sam says, point blank. 

"I'm fine."

Sam actually laughs. "What's your metric?"

"How bad I want a drink," Dean answers.

"And you're not giving yourself one."

"Guess not. Like I said, I'm fine."

"Are you high?"

"What?" Dean says, with a degree of incredulity Sam hadn't expected.

"Are you high?" Sam repeats.

"I'm fine."

Sam takes a deep breath. He supposes this should all be good news. It's as close as they're likely to get, in any case. Dean had called; and isn't that what Sam had wanted? If he's going to be glass-half-full about it, this is an upswing; Dean is trying to climb back on the wagon. Dean apparently feels that it is going well. 

Sam would feel better about it if Dean's wagon weren't already careening over the hills and into a fairy mound. But this is fine. Sam can handle this.

"You know, historically, we've tried to stay out of fae stuff," he says.

"We never actually stay out of anything, though," Dean counters. 

"Sure, but there's no way bringing fairies into this is going to make dealing with this curse any easier. That's just out of the frying pan and into the fire. And fairies are just-- They're really good at mindfucking anyone, any chance they get. I doubt they'd pass on the opportunity."

"What're you trying to say? Just spit it out."

Sometimes Sam feels like the only thing they tell each other is what they've already told each other. Dean should damn well know what he's trying to say.

"Have you read Rip Van Winkle recently?" Sam asks.

"Sam, no one has."

"Okay. If a fairy offered you an, um-- a flagon, right at this moment, would you take it?"

"Depends. Is she a hot fairy? Jesus, Sam. When have I ever taken candy from strangers?"

"Do you want me to answer that?"

The call is over, just like that.

 

\--

 

Sam, in Tuba City, Arizona, presses the edge of his phone against his upper lip. Just breathes. It's hot in Tuba City, though it's just past 9AM. He has an oil filter to buy and his Wrangler to attend to, before it gets too hot for him to touch. He only has his room 'til eleven, and it's time to get back on the road.

Sam feels the sweat bead on his philtrum. It slips down his nape, too. Crowns his hairline. 

He breathes.

 _heard from dean,_ Sam texts Jody, as a postscript to a conversation they'd half-had the previous week. Sam hadn't volunteered much, except that Dean was proving elusive. He hadn't explained their situation, and it's Jody's kindest gift that she always knows when not to ask.

 _heard from claire, too_ Jody texts back a few minutes afterward. _must be something in the water!_

She adds, _how u doin?_

 _same old,_ Sam replies, because that's how he'd replied to Dean. Gone with the flow and met Dean wherever in God's name he was. Tucumcari, New Mexico. Crazytown. Fairyland. Whatever. Sam gets this anxious flash--that this is what it'd be like if they were done and it was all over. Dean would skip orbit and somehow ride off into obscurity without him. Nothing to hold him down and no blaze of glory. Only non sequitur. 

_hows he doing?_ texts Jody.

 _I don't care,_ is Sam's first thought. But that's not even true. The question makes him want to throw up, all dread and fury. _I don't know,_ he means. He doesn't want to lie twice.

 _same old_ , he says.

He's not even sure if that's a lie or not. Admittedly, he and Dean hadn't been that much more together when they'd been together. But Sam has to believe it's different now. It hadn't felt like this before. It had felt downright dissociative, talking to Dean like they're capable of having a normal conversation anymore. Acting like this was all same old, same old. Even if that's always been their ace in the hole--being capable of having completely normal fucking conversations, even when the world's going to hell. It's called being professional.

It's called being self-negating. After all, he and Dean only have the two basic modes: Professional self-negation and being so mired in their own psychodramas they'd end the world to save each other. 

Right now, Sam's swimming in between them both. If pressed, Sam supposes he'd call this mode 'off.'


	16. Chapter 16

Off's not really a mode Sam's allowed to have.

"I don't know," is the first thing out of Dean's mouth, after Sam answers on the first ring.

"What?"

"Fuck. I'd lick it off the floor in Hell."

"No, you wouldn't," it Sam's instant reply. Then he asks, "What are you talking about?"

Dean mutters something about flagons. Then he offers a long string of his many thoughts on flagons, and the word flagon, and how much Sam thought a flagon was, and eventually Sam understands that this is about the question he'd posed--about fairies and Rip van Winkle, and fairies and vulnerability.

Sam takes a slow breath. "What do you need?" he asks. At this point, the answer is probably any number of things. 'A drink' is an obvious one. 

This is where Sam knew they'd end up. This is the floor dropping out from under him yet again. Dean's taking it with him. Obviously, withdrawal is harder than he thought it would be.

"What do you need?" Sam asks again. He steels himself. It's time for the next, worst chapter of his nightmare.

"Dean, I need you to tell me what you need."

The answer Sam wants to hear is 'you.' _I need you, Sam._

Dean babbles, "Help. I need help. I c-- I can't--" 

Dean needs help, and Sam will give it.

That's how this is supposed to go.

But Sam's brain has other ideas. Or his tongue has other ideas. The muscles in his tongue. Body/soul, heart/brain--whatever Cartesian disaster zone Sam is, they don't say anything at first. Then Sam comes crashing down, leaving only terror and nausea. 

His mind races, wordless. Then it's just a scream. Because he-- _can't_ \--

It happens so quickly it's like he knocks the wind out of himself. He can't breathe.

Water on all sides.

He can't breathe.

Sam gets thick words out. He's speaking through a gag. He asks Dean dumb body stuff. Like, oh hey Dean, do you happen to know your blood pressure? Are you experiencing tremors? No? Good. What about hallucinations? And okay, can you handle them?

"You're okay," say the muscles in Sam's tongue.

Dean barks laughter.

"This isn't going to kill you today," Sam re-phrases. It's the bar Dean set for them. It's a low one, but it is still literally, vitally important, and maybe that has to be good enough. Maybe that's enough to be proud of.

He needs to be there. Take Dean's pulse, make sure he keeps breathing. Hold his shoulders steady, feel the heat in his skin ( _fire_ ). Sam needs to be there.

Sam needs to be as far away from this as he can get.

( _fire_ )

"Please," says Sam. He's not sure if he's asking Dean not to die, or asking his terror to end. _Give him back,_ Sam thinks, which isn't a plea to either.

Because Sam can't do it.

Sam is not the higher power Sam needs right now.

"Dean, I wanna help. I do. You know I do. But I just-- I--"

_Can't._

Sam doesn't know how to say it, without feeling like it means Dean can't be helped. Or like this is Dean's fault, and this is punishment. Like it's Sam's fault. He doesn't know how to feel like it's not his fault.

But Sam does know that he can't handle this. Or his brain does. The muscles in his tongue. "Call me tomorrow," he says, against the will of those muscles. "I'm not saying don't call. I just-- I can't--"

Sam hangs up.

He hangs up.

He hangs up.

He hangs up.

 

\--

 

_He can't--_


	17. Chapter 17

Sam hangs up.


	18. Chapter 18

_You can't what?_ he asks himself, when he's still in Tuba City and still in the room that hasn't been his since 11AM. It's 11PM now, and Sam suspects that the only reason no one's come knocking is because the manager's husband--she's Priya; he's Kushal--is as unable to deal with Sam's bullshit as Sam is. But the thought of walking to the office and just handing over some cash (no pleasantries, no apologies, no nothing) is too much. He figures his credit card's on file; they can take what they need.

_You can't what, Sam?_

Talk to your brother on the phone? Care about him? Is it seriously that much work just to care? Do you have to _work_ at that? What's wrong with you? What kind of monster are you, you can't even--

"Stop it," says the television. "Stop breathing! Anne, stop breathing like that."

Nicole Kidman floats into view, behind the audio, her edges slightly awry. Her cathode rays are misaligned. Sam switches to QVC and sets the remote back on the bedside table.

There are Brooke Shields Timeless Chiffon Tops for sale.

There is neuropeptide night cream for sale.

There are Siren Hex sneakers for sale.

There are two pounds of chicken and dumpling soup and two pounds of sides for sale. 

Sam considers dialing in.

If Sam were in Tucumcari, he might've walked in the door with two pounds of chicken and dumpling soup. It would've started as a way to get some air and would've turned into something else. He'd hover. He'd give Dean over and above any help Dean would've wanted. He'd exhaust himself beyond exhaustion and he wouldn't actually help that much, but he'd endure--because they're in this together and that's what they do. That is the right thing to do. They'd die for each other, you know?

Of course, if Sam were in Tucumcari, no one would need any saving. They wouldn't be cursed; they'd be fine. (Would they?) Dean wouldn't need help. (Wouldn't he?) He wouldn't have asked for any. (He might've.) Sam wouldn't be--whatever he is. 

(Oh, wouldn't you.)

If Sam were in Tucumcari, he'd have done the exact same thing he has always done. 

( _Oh, don't high horse this. Martyr,_ his cells whisper back at him. _Remember leaving him in Purgatory? Or that bridge, with Castiel--that night when you learned about Gadreel. You let him go. Remember all the times that you--_ )

Sam remembers all the times that he's stayed. Purified the demon from Dean, and nearly got a hammer for it. One year later, he let Dean hold a scythe above his head. Hell, Sam's done it when no magic was involved at all. He remembers being twenty years old, having just declared his major. He remembers sneaking Dean into his dorm room when everyone else was gone for Thanksgiving break and hoping to high hell Dean was going to be okay when he had to kick him out again on Sunday morning, over the worst of it but hardly coherent. It's what they do for each other.

But mostly, Sam remembers Dean closing his hand around Famine's ring, and using the same hand to close the door to Bobby's panic room, with Sam on the other side. He remembers Dean coming back a day later, forty-eight hours later, seventy-two hours later, to check on him. Refill the pitcher. Offer a sandwich. Always drunk--more than he should have been, if he'd wanted to be able to stop Sam from escaping; if Sam had ever wanted to escape. Always drunk because otherwise he couldn't handle Sam hurting like that, couldn't handle seeing Sam through that. Because to help each other is the best and worst thing they can ever do for themselves, because they are all they have and they have always been too little and too much. Because it's too much.

You wanna know why they always end up here? Sam asks himself. That's why.

 _I can't,_ Sam thinks, and wants to die. He thinks about what he'd do if Dean does.

 

\--

 

Because Dean could die. This could kill him. This might actually kill Sam's brother. That's the only thing Sam can think about, even though he'd told Dean that it wouldn't. He remembers every one of Dean's many and arcanely complicated sobriety strategies, of the sort that come with as many intentional loopholes and seemingly moon-aligned particulars as any spellwork. Every time, they work less. 

On the other hand, there's a part of him believes that hysterics are for people who have never been here before. He has. Dean has. They know what to do. 

Yet another part of him thinks there's no telling what Dean might do if Sam's not watching. Forget alcohol.

Sam's litany fills his head and then it stuffs his throat, stiffens his limbs, bulges his stomach. Then there isn't a movement Sam makes that doesn't scream _you did this._

_You killed him._

So Sam doesn't move.

 

\--

 

This isn't about guilt, Sam reminds himself.

This is about staying afloat.

Dean doesn't call the next day, though Priya and Kushal's teenage daughter does. Her name is Crystal, and she is very patient with him.

This is about staying afloat.

 

\--

 

Dean doesn't call the second day, and whether it's out of spite or peril it's hard to say. Maybe he's died out of spite, because Sam told him he wasn't going to.

There's a lot of things Sam wants to hear from Dean, and knows he won't. That's just not the life they're living. It doesn't require much generosity on Sam's part to imagine there are things Dean would tell him, if they hadn't been taken from him. But that's not the life they're living, either.

They're beyond confessions and redemptions and absolutions and grace. None of that's going to happen. They're probably beyond endings.

Because Sam knows that if he loses Dean, he'll only lose him over and over again. And that's no ending.

 

\--

 

Sacrifice assumes it's the last thing you'll ever have to do.

But that's stupid, Sam thinks. Someone will always need you. It's stupid to die for someone today if they're only going to need you tomorrow.

Right?


	19. Chapter 19

Sam is no longer in Tuba City when he finally hears from Dean. Sam's on I-40 past Needles, and it's been about a week. Sam immediately pulls off the road and hikes his phone up full-volume.

"I know it's been a while," Dean starts. He sounds rough, but he also sounds like Dean. "Didn't want to call until I had something to say."

"Dean," Sam says. Beyond that, his relief is wordless.

"Yeah, I couldn't think of anything, either."

Dean's no longer in the middle of a psychotic break and he didn't die, but of course none of that is anything worth mentioning. He is, however, eating toast for dinner. This is apparently is worth mentioning. 

Sam figures it means he's either out of money or he's feeling ill, or both. What it actually means is Dean is pulled over somewhere just north of Roswell with old continental breakfast bread, and he's holding it over a lighter. Also, he's out of money and he feels like shit, but he is making toast. So, small victories.

"Why don't you just eat the bread?" Sam asks. "Why does it need to be toast?"

Dean replies, "Because then I wouldn't have anything to do."

"Fair enough," says Sam. 

Suddenly out of small talk, Sam finds himself at the precipice of a mental sinkhole. He doesn't know where to go from there, anymore. The quiet stretches and stretches until finally he asks, "So, you uh… Are you... aiming for X days sober? That sort of thing?"

"Do you want me to?"

"I want you to do whatever will get you through this."

"Then probably not."

"Okay."

Dean's breath hitches, and Sam hears the squeak of the car door opening. It's windy north of Roswell. Dean leaves Sam behind in the car. 

When he returns he's lost his interest in toast.

Again, the quiet encroaches.

"You should still try to eat something, even if-- The sugars in the bread will help," Sam offers.

"Yeah, I have Google, too. Don't think my stomach gives a fuck what helps, though."

"But otherwise, you're doing okay?"

"Well, I'm not dead." Dean whistles, like he's not even sure if that's a true statement. "Fuck," he says, to summarize. "Fuck."

Sam takes a deep breath.

"So, all that and you're still okay… with maybe ending up here again. Having to go through all of that again," says Sam. All that, and Dean still doesn't think he can make a go of it sober. Can't imagine trying. "I'm not trying to like, _say_ anything with that. I'm really just asking," Sam finishes.

"Well, I'm not dead," Dean repeats. Then he says, "I dunno. I dunno, Sam, I just -- I'm not trying to hurt you."

"I know."

"I'm not trying to make this your problem."

"Dean, it always will be. You're my brother."

"I shouldn't have called you, when I was-- Because it's not like--"

Sam cuts him off. "No. You absolutely should have." 

Sam wants to say he can't imagine what it would have been like if Dean hadn't come to him for help when he needed it, but he doesn't have to imagine. His memory's just fine. And Dean absolutely should have called him. 

The thing that's harder for Sam to admit is that Sam was right to hang up.

Sam's not sure he could be standing here if he hadn't. It's mind-boggling to him, that he could be that fucking fragile--one crisis intervention away from crisis. It seems impossible that helping his brother could possibly hurt him that much. He and Dean have weathered the end of the end of the world, but Sam can't handle a phone call?

Correction: Sam can't handle his brother in pain--not when Sam can't do anything but double it. Drown himself. Dean is the same goddamn way, and they can't do this anymore. He is what happens because they can't do this anymore.

It's a death by a thousand cuts. This isn't where their story started, after all. 

"I'm just trying to make it through this," says Dean, who is in pain, right at this moment. Sam can hear it.

"I know," says Sam.

"You know that's all I want you to do, too," says Dean. "Whatever keeps you okay. No matter what."

"Yeah, I know," Sam says, though maybe he hadn't. Today it means something. To hear it from Dean means something. It's what Dean hadn't done, after all. What Sam hadn't done, for years and years until finally--

The point is, maybe next time, Dean will. Maybe, one day, that will be what saves him. Sam's pretty sure it's what saved Sam.

"Thank you," says Dean. He doesn't say for what.

 

\--

 

Sam stays afloat, more or less. So does his brother. 

They keep going.


	20. Chapter 20

They keep going. There's old music on the radio. A new interchange in Kansas. A new farmer's market in Denver that Sam swears to god is worth driving to, even from the bunker.

"You like driving around in that Wrangler way more than is healthy." 

"Sure, Dean. I can only aspire to your completely normal relationship with your car."

Since that night with the toast, they haven't talked much about real things, like breaking points. But Sam has this claustrophobic feeling of their always being very close at hand. Closer than ever before. 

Dean is sick again. What that means, exactly, Dean hasn't said--just that he's used all his free passes. There aren't any good roads left: Either the withdrawal makes him sick or his pancreas does. He still tries to pick the high road. He's been sleeping more and eating more carefully, but better habits doesn't mean feeling better. He's just not dying. He always sounds tired.

He's trying.

Sam can still feel that tingle, sometimes. The cosmic tickle of a crane beating its wings. Sometimes it's so faint Sam doesn't even realize that's what he's following. Sometimes he goes weeks without feeling a thing, so they must be getting closer--for real, this time. Maybe. That doesn't make Sam feel better, either. He still goes weeks without feeling anything at all, cranes or himself or otherwise. But Sam is also not dying.

In Sam's ideal world, the last tingle, the last inkling, leads him finally to Dean. Instead of a crane, Sam looks up and sees his brother. Sam figures in a world without GPS or smartphones, no other way of finding Dean once more, it would have been very romantic.

"Yeah, too romantic. How about this--it cuts to black, so the audience doesn't know if we explode or not."

"Audience?" Sam parrots, incredulous.

"You know, in the movie version of us. Which they make 'cause everyone's super thankful we saved their asses so many times."

"Seriously? You want to _Inception_ us and cut to black? Do you really like Chris Nolan that much?"

"I mean, Butch and Sundance cuts to black."

"But you still know they died."

"No I don't. For all we know they ended up on an airplane over Maryland."

"Sure. Because that movie was about killing Lilith and summoning the Devil. The usual."

"Just sayin', nobody believes us when we say it, either. Oh, hey-- when this is over, we should go to the Grand Canyon. Like, actually go. Work on the bucket list--"

Sam snorts.

"What."

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just--I kinda. Went. Already."

"Wow. Seriously, Sam? Is nothing sacred?"

"Uh, no. Not really. God left, remember?"

Silence, like a sinkhole again.

No. Silence, like silence. It's okay. No one needs to prove they're there by speaking. 

Honestly, it feels good, looking back. Like Sam had finally broken something loose out there. The Grand Canyon had been this mythical place, tied always to their blaze of glory. But it can't be that anymore--Sam's already been. He's been, and come back, and in the end it was just another place.

It's okay.

 

\--

 

He is okay.

 

\--

 

Days later, the silence a bridge and not a barrier, Dean calls, asks seamlessly, "But really, Sam. What am I supposed to do now? Vindictively go to the Grand Canyon without you?"

"I mean, if that's what makes you happy."

"Fine. When this is over, the first thing I'm gonna do is go to the Grand Canyon without you."

"Awesome. Just make sure we meet up first so I can give you my map."

"You're making that face, aren't you. Oh, don't gimme those innocent sputter--you know exactly what face. Okay. When this is over, the first thing I'm gonna do is wipe that--"

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about endings," Sam breaks in. "I dunno. I just--"

Dean doesn't ask for an explanation. "What should we talk about instead?" he asks.

"I mean… There's a _Roswell_ marathon on. Whether that show sucks or not is still an unsolved mystery."

"Shit, you're right. What timezone are you in?"

"Eastern."

"Fuck. I'm Mountain. Gimme an hour or two and I can get to Central, though--"

"I'm starting now. Every episode you miss is fodder I can and will be using against you, so... you know. Let's see some hustle." Sam turns the television volume all the way up, so Dean can hear the _Roswell_ theme song loud and clear.

Dean revs the Impala's engine in retaliation. It sounds like he's literally holding his phone to the fender. "Hey, you hear that?! Bitch."

Sam laughs. "See you soon, Dean." He hangs up, satisfaction like honey in his mouth.

It's probably a full ten minutes later-- _Roswell_ gives way to commercial break, and Sam is listening to a tall, generic woman teach him about Brillo, a medication for asthma not well-controlled by an inhaler or other asthma-control medications--when Sam realizes Dean's not coming. 

Not to him, not tonight. 

For ten minutes, Sam had completely forgotten.

Dean's not coming.

 

\--

 

Sam still goes to the door when someone's big block engine rumbles into the parking lot. Just in case. Sure, Dean's definitely not in North Carolina right now, curse or no curse. He's not behind the wheel of the blue and yellow Monte Carlo that pulls in. Sam's not the man sitting on the ashtray outside of his room, boots propped up on the trash can. 

That man waves to the Monte Carlo.

Sam leans against the door frame, curling his toes into the thick brownness of the carpet--furry but also, somehow, still soap-slippery. The sun is setting in North Carolina. In the Mountain timezone, it's barely dinner.

 _Rowell_ comes back from commercial break, but Sam lingers at the door.

Sam would say that what unfolds next is cinematic, if stuff like this didn't happen all the time here. The Carolinas just have that way about them.

The man in the Monte Carlo keeps it idling when he steps out. He's paunchy and hunched and he's wearing the most dapper fringe jacket Sam has ever seen. He hasn't broken eye contact with the man on the ashtray, and he doesn't even as he fishes his own pack of cigarettes from the fringe jacket. He slaps the bottom and two cigs slide up. He plucks one out, but the other--

It hovers. Just for a moment. Under its own power. It unfurls and folds and suddenly it is a bird.

The two men never break eye contact. Never see the crane.

Sam, for his part in this parking lot showdown, stumbles out of his room, his feet instantly regretting his urgency as he attempts to navigate the sharp asphalt, the glass. But he doesn't give a single fuck if he looks crazy. That's his goddamn crane. And he will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.

He chases this one like it's his very first. Like it's his very last. 

Like he has no beginning, or middle, or end.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the amazing **finchandsparrow** , who bid on me for the SPN "Seasons" Gen Anthology fundraising auction. (♥!) The prompt(s) of hers I chose were:
> 
> 1) Everyday, in-between, realistic, and/or (seemingly) mundane moments that are too "boring" to be shown on TV.
> 
> 2) Sam and Dean are apart for a little while, for whatever reason. Just staying somewhere that is not the Bunker. Exploring the area, maybe settling in a little. Meeting locals. Working, or not. Just life-ing. By themselves.
> 
> 3) Unflattering portrayals/perceptions of well-liked characters, because they're human too. 
> 
> A huge thanks to her for being really fucking wonderful, frankly!!!!! :)


End file.
